


Like the day I...

by Bijouu



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alice in Wonderland References, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Peter Pan References, Reincarnation, Storybook References, Time Travel, cursing, horror elements (minor), traitors and redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28189533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bijouu/pseuds/Bijouu
Summary: Prompt #2 of TXTFicFest.Eternally and Dreamcatcher’s Deja Vu inspired AU where a revolution is underway in Wonderland. After learning about a hidden timeline where the more favored Spades ruled instead of the Hearts, it’s every suit versus the Hearts in the crumbling destruction of their magical world. When the last Joker travels to the world’s counter-realm to claim the throne’s power and set things straight, Wonderland begins to split at its seams. Childhood friends and the only Aces of their suits, Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, and Taehyun, abandon their posts in a journey to an unknown world to reestablish the ruling suit of Wonderland and stop the end of their world.
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Kang Taehyun, Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: TXT Secret Santa Fic Fest 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theprincessdaily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprincessdaily/gifts).



> Hello! I was inspired a lot by Dreamcatcher's MV and decided to take a full fantasy approach to it. It came out a little intense, but I hope you enjoy it muchly, theprincessdaily! Please read the tags and happy holidays <3

It was the first Joker who had exposed the truth to the world, and it was the second who ran away to avenge him. When the Hearts’ court had heard about the rumblings in the depths of Wonderland, it didn’t take long of them to figure out just who revealed the future truth. It had been peaceful this far; as peaceful as a ruling family could make of a whole world. To disrespect the Hearts was to be publicly exiled, to be stripped of their card and suit and tossed off the edge of the map to where the rest of the Wonderland rejects were.

Soobin had seen it happen with his own eyes. The first Joker, dragged from his knees in front of the Hearts’ court, bouncing between spitting curses and pleading for his life. “For your crime, slander against the Court, inciting a riot, and disrupting the peaceful reality of Wonderland,” a voice had boomed from behind Soobin, “The court has ruled your punishment. Off with your head.”

He dug his fingernails into his palms. He could never forget the card’s screams as he was dragged away on that night.

The second Joker, pitifully referred to as the last remaining Joker by the population of Wonderland, had been coerced, or so Soobin had heard. At the outskirts of Wonderland, the last Joker had been fooled through his heartbreak, led astray by a cat with an odd smile. The moment that Soobin had caught this story from the wind’s own whispers, the sky began to split, and the warring began. 

He was supposed to be trained for this; Aces only came once a generation, and Soobin was the only Ace of Hearts. He was tactful and thoughtful, though less of a person who had endurance to begin with. When the Hearts had been forced from the castle, a result of a three-versus-one battle between the other suits and themselves, Soobin hadn’t once reached for his sword. How could he?

“Get out before they find us.” 

Why were there tears in Yeonjun’s eyes when he said that? Why did he hide them in that room of painful memories while the violence and screams happened right outside? Desperately pushed up against the rumbling walls, Soobin could even feel the heat of the flames on the other side. He pulled his wrist free from the other’s grip, cupping the back of Yeonjun’s neck.

“You don’t believe I’ll make it. If I burn with this place, they won’t have anything left to fight for,” Soobin murmured. The two of them winced as something crashed outside, followed by more screams, and that time, Soobin took Yeonjun’s hand and squeezed it in his own. “Really, get out of here. I can create a tunnel for you. They’re looking for me-”

“So just come with me then!” 

The checkered tiles beneath them began to crack, shaking just as the entire castle was. Soobin was supposed to wait until the rest of the court had gotten out, and hiding here in the throne room with the already destroyed decor and steps to the grand throne, there felt like less and less of a reason to remain. “And go where?” Soobin hissed back, gripping the closed door frame to keep them from toppling over. The explosions from outside shattered the glass surrounding the room, and the two of them hit the tile, crouched over one another as the blasts continued. “Yeonjun, get out of here!” 

The pillars would fall at any moment. 

“We can make it out- Beomgyu and Taehyun already know, there’s something that we’ve found and I just needed to tell you,” Yeonjun rushed, the breath coming out of his lungs in steam as he pulled his hand up, ice emerging from his palms as he used his Spade’s magic, drawing them up a shield from the flames. They scrambled, knees soaked in the puddle as the bright crystal melted around them. The fire was licking into the throne room.

“I can’t get out of this,” Soobin paled, though he grit his teeth, yanking Yeonjun up from the floor as the ground continued to tremble and the castle continued to crumble around them. “They’ll- they’re going to expect me some day-”

“To  _ what _ ?!”

“To kill you!”

“They want me to kill you too, what do you think I gain out of doing that?!”

Everything was falling apart.

The ground mournfully split, tossing Yeonjun and Soobin this way and that, and they clung to each others’ hands, crying out in pain when the ground disintegrated from underneath their feet. Soobin’s vines carefully woven around the last sturdy pillars of the throne room, and with the last bit of strength that he had, tugged Yeonjun along with him, creating a careful tunnel around them. 

The first Joker had said he found something strange. Blue and green, hidden magic deep in a portal of a hidden well. There was something heinous that the Hearts were hiding, that the Hearts were using to keep in control of their magical paradise. The whispering winds and the singing flowers had silenced when the Joker had run to every suit, screaming at the top of his lungs:

_ The Spades were destined to rule! You have been fooled all this long! _

Once the secret had come out, it was as if the world became animate and retaliated in tune to the rage of the other three suits. For centuries, there was only one ruler, and despite the anger and pain, that had been respected as if it were tradition. To have learned that there were other plans for the universe, that the Hearts had been maliciously altering the timeline over and over again, placing things selfishly in their own favor, only fed into resentment.

Soobin begged the universe to just listen once. It wasn’t him or his friends that had caused this. The generations before them were the cause of their current pains, but Wonderland doesn’t do much except feel the pain in the liveliness of its cards and suits.

They ran, hand in hand, through the mess of the palace. Soobin was supposed to do what the Queen expected of him; eliminate the remaining aces should they still besiege the castle, and return with their swords. He could only imagine the faces of his closest friends, about the care they shared between their palms and secrets in their hearts. There was no way he could do it; Soobin would never.

Outside, it rained ash and the sky was cracking into a million pieces. 

“Please, just to make all of this stop,” Soobin begged, pulling a breathless Yeonjun down into the pits of the palace’s garden, hiding behind the gorgeous rose bushes he’d tended to since a child. Everything was bleary; the smoke from the burning structures had the both of them coughing into their hands. “Take my sword - claim victory. I’d rather be exiled, than have to one day see our heads in a basket.”

Yeonjun gritted his teeth, tossing his head forward and back like the thought had put a vile taste in his mouth. He gripped Soobin by the shoulders, hiding with him in their still-burning world. “You’ll never be too far from me, Soobin-ah, I promise. I’ll never leave- I will wait for you. I  _ will _ wait for you. When this fire burns out, I’ll return to these ashes for you.”

Their lips trembled as they kissed one last time, and Yeonjun took Soobin’s sword from his side, not without wiping his tears roughly on the collar of his shirt. 

There was nothing more painful to Soobin, than wait until the fire had gone out, only hoping and wishing that Yeonjun and their two other friends had safely made it out. As expected, he was the last to return to the Queen and King, tattered and burned. It shocked the people of the court. They had been run out of their land, had been dethroned or so it seemed, though the universe continued to riot.

It rained ash for five days before Soobin had been gripped harshly at the elbows and forced to sit before the Court.

“Ace. Are you aware of the current situation regarding the suits?” 

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Are you aware of how dispensable cards are to the court, and how imperative it is that the court remains full?”

“Yes, your majesty.” 

“We will be hearing from our first witness right now.”

In the pseudo courtroom that the Hearts constructed, exiled out of their own land after the other three suits marched them from their castle, Soobin sat with his back straight. Though his hands shook, hidden in his lap, his expression was firm and void as he stared at the Jack of Hearts at the podium far across from himself. There wasn’t anyone on his side of the court. No one would want to associate themselves with a traitor.

“I witnessed the Ace assist the Ace of Spades’ escape on the day of the uprising.” 

Soobin remembered it well. He remembered how gentle Yeonjun’s fingers felt on his face, even if he was desperate, pleading for him to run away with him, but at the time, Soobin was unable to do it. The last thing that he wanted to do was get Yeonjun, or any of his friends into trouble, just because he’d turned traitor to his own suit. 

If he’d known that it was going to happen anyways, he would have gladly ran away with Yeonjun.

“He led the Ace through the castle and surrendered his sword to him.”

His hands had been shaking. The fire that raged behind him had blazed with such an intensity that Soobin could feel the heat on his back. He pleaded for Yeonjun to hold it, declare his victory to his suit if to just quell the Spades’ anger over the Hearts. The victory was supposed to be celebrated. It was supposed to put glory in the Spades’ favor. 

“Then before joining us, the Ace kissed the Spade.”

It was bittersweet, but it wasn’t their first secret. From sneaking out of their homes to finding each other where their territory met, on their secret rendezvous under the stars and kisses shared in secret corridors after Court meetings…. Soobin and Yeonjun were no strangers to keeping their love a secret, even as painful as it was. 

The Court gasped at the accusation, turning their enraged faces toward Soobin, but from so far away, all Soobin could see were the red of their collars. There was an uproar, everyone talking over each other at once like Soobin had committed the worst crime of all by falling in love with the enemy.

Soobin kept his jaw set.

Before a week ago, they weren’t even enemies to begin with.

The Queen’s gavel hit the wood table with a loud, silencing thump.

“Ace. As a member of the Court, you are expected to be held to high standards and to defend the suit. You are to give up your life for the suit if necessary. To have put the rest of us at risk by not eliminating the Spade when you had your chance is nothing short of treason.”

He didn’t dare move or lower his eyes. Looking at the Queen, he could see her genuine remorse, even from so far away. In his dark corner of the makeshift court, the disappointment was crystal clear. 

“Off with your head.” 

When the numbered cards came to Soobin’s seat, he didn’t resist them, standing even as they gripped him by the elbows. He didn’t cry as he was forced out of the courtroom, as the vile words were thrown at him on his way out. Instead, he thought about Yeonjun, about if he was okay, if he were taking care of Taehyun and Beomgyu. He wondered if his friends would mourn him.

In his holding cell, without his sword, Soobin could only anxiously think of ways to escape. He couldn’t give up, not after promising Yeonjun that he would be okay and that they would be together again one day. The guards in front pitied Soobin, that much he knew, from how they refused to make eye contact with the Ace that was once so well respected in the Court.

In all honesty, it wouldn’t take much for Soobin to burst the cell bars down on his own. The vines in his spirit, the thorns from his white roses, could blow the metal right off of its hinges, and he knew that, but the last thing that Soobin needed was a scene. He’d already given up his status, his life, and potentially put the lives of his best friends in danger by having been caught by that Jack.

The world was cruel, Soobin realized, sitting back against the wall.

As quietly as possible, the vines grew from Soobin’s wrists, pushing themselves into the floor and attempting to dig through. He kept his eyes forward, on the backs of the guards. The cards were as stoic as cards could be, not turning even once to look at Soobin. Perhaps they still felt inferior, with Soobin’s status and with the both of them being simple numbered soldiers of the deck. 

He was meant to be powerful. 

With capabilities far beyond just a standard member of the deck, it wouldn’t be impossible to get out of there, but it sure as hell would be difficult. He did give his sword to Yeonjun, just as the Jack had said. It was as much of a ploy to get the Hearts to safety and the Spades at peace as a promise to Yeonjun, that he would return one day to collect it again.

Even if he turned his back to his family, his Court that he’d been raised so carefully and cherished in, it would be okay. Just as Yeonjun had risked it all, going to search for him inside the crumbling pillars of the castle, Soobin would make it out of here alive. Just as Yeonjun had said- maybe they could run away. Maybe, they could get away from this mess of Wonderland and be safe and sound, together. Maybe they could find Taehyun and Beomgyu, and the four of them could live peacefully until time caused their deaths.

In whatever it was that the world turned into, Soobin knew that he wouldn’t dare to live it without Yeonjun. He didn’t believe Yeonjun could live in it without himself either.

The thick vines dug further into the earth, carving out a place underneath himself. It had to have been a setup- there was no way that the jailer would willingly put him in such a shabby cell. It was like he was expecting Soobin to escape. With the guards keeping their backs to Soobin, he tipped himself backward into the tunnel and fell deep into the earth.


	2. Chapter 2

It had taken a month for everything to finally stop burning, and by then, the central palace was nothing but old pillars of stone and ashes. The sky was gray, nearly falling apart as pieces of its endless screen shattered and made thunderous cracks as the magic of Wonderland cried to keep it together. Yeonjun was no better. Though the Hearts had been run out of the palace, they were still past the boundaries, hidden somewhere on exiled terrain. They were meant to celebrate, but how could they celebrate something so destructive?

When he delivered Soobin’s sword to the head of his suit, there had been cheers and roars of victory. Beomgyu and Taehyun, the respective Aces of Clubs and Diamonds, watched in disbelief. Yeonjun grit his teeth, stoic as he’d been clapped on the shoulder and praised. By eliminating the Hearts’ ace, the three suits were certain that there was nothing left to keep the Hearts alive. They would be stomped into the earth. They would become Wonderland’s next “nothing,” and the Spades would be the ones to restore this place to glory.

There was not enough magic in the world, Yeonjun thought, clenching his fists tightly around the sword’s scabbard once it was returned to him once again. Yeonjun should be the one to keep it, they said. He was the one who brought victory to their suit, and so this was his treasure, they said.

The timeline that the Joker had allegedly seen; what use was it to turn this place upside down, without knowing where to find the source of the reign and magic? His fingertips felt cold, icy from his Spade’s magic, like it was itching to cry and spill its frozen tears onto the floor below. If Soobin were here, he’d hold his hand and hide his trembling fingers behind their backs.

The Clubs, Spades, and Diamonds celebrated.

The world was crumbling outside their party.

“You didn’t…?” Beomgyu carefully asked, like his throat was closing in on itself with emotion.

Yeonjun could only give him a sharp expression, running his fingers carefully over Soobin’s treasured item. “I’d never.”

That was all the comfort they needed. Somehow, the crooked moon in Wonderland’s darkened sky looked nothing more than a sharp-toothed grin. The sky was bleeding into colors of blue and green and black. It was furious with something that only the aces could feel. The three of them gathered themselves in a hallway as music played in the still-standing grand hall of the Diamonds’ palace. 

“He’ll be waiting for you somewhere. We have to find him,” Taehyun said, after he was certain that their presence wouldn’t be missed from the ill-timed celebration. The rest of the courts danced like the world hadn’t just mournfully rained ashed, like there wasn’t enough clean water or meat or life left in Wonderland. Even the sky wanted to cry, but it was too spent to share any more of its rain onto the dry, dry earth below.

Wonderland had become a wasteland.

“I’ll find him,” Yeonjun said, though his tongue felt thick in his mouth. Dry, dry as the earth, dry as his eyes after he’d said goodbye to Soobin and promised him that he would be there for his return. It felt like the moon was laughing at him. The strange hues in the sky were pointing at Yeonjun, making the skin of his neck heat with fear. “You two can… you two can stay here, and make sure they don’t miss me.”

“Are you kidding me?” Beomgyu scoffed, wiping his eyes on his arm. He was quick to cry whenever he was overwhelmed, but had since grown out of that habit as they’d too grown up. Yeonjun didn’t blame the younger for unearthing that sad habit of his, especially after all they’ve been through. “We want to find Soobin too.”

People their age shouldn’t have been sent to battle and eradicate a castle of its cards. Yeonjun, Beomgyu, and Taehyun too, had all refused to draw their swords on that day.

“They were exiled west,” Yeonjun had mumbled. From their high place, a balcony in the kingdom of Diamonds, it was difficult to ignore the once lucious land of the Hearts. They had always kept their grounds blooming with roses deep and red. That was something that Yeonjun had noticed of Soobin the first time they’d met as children; Soobin’s roses were a beautiful, simple, white.

The ground over there was black. The pillars of the once castle and crisped garden were all that remained of the Hearts. 

“I think he’d try to find us there,” Taehyun said, gesturing with his chin to the distantly burned land of Hearts. “We used to meet there always, as kids. I’m just worried, it’s been this long and we haven’t…”

Yeonjun understood. Despite their late night expeditions, looking for whispers, traces of Soobin, even one white petal of his on the dark ground, it was like he’d suddenly disappeared. He was itching to have Soobin in his arms again. The uprising was so unexpected, it was almost like Yeonjun didn’t have enough time to say goodbye. 

“He’s probably looking for us too,” Beomgyu interjected, placing a hand onto Taehyun’s shoulder. The youngest of them all didn’t need to bear the pain alone. They could try to remain optimistic. There was something that the four of them shared; the pain of being an ace. The expectations that fell on their shoulders were too massive, but something about the dreary moon in the sky settled the uncomfortable ease in their chests. They knew Soobin had to be alive somewhere. 

Although Yeonjun was the oldest, it was Soobin who was usually the level headed one, the one who had the right decisions to lead the group. If the Joker were right, if it were another timeline and brighter future where Spades were in control, then shouldn’t Yeonjun have been the one to lead their team of aces? He couldn’t picture himself in that situation. Even now, with just the three of them, Yeonjun was unsure of what to say.

“Let’s go back there,” Yeonjun whispered. “If he’s not there, we should at least… we should at least find that fountain. You two already managed to get good leads on it. But Soobin will come first.”

All adults do is riot when they feel like something is unfair. They screech and burn, and even though the world had fallen apart at their feet, they claimed it as a victory. They were selfish, Yeonjun thought, concealing Taehyun and Beomgyu along with him as they prepared their treasures and snuck away from their suits. People in charge never care about the lesser-than-thems. Outside their palaces, Wonderland continued to rot.

It was disgusting.

It was disgusting to see the discarded clothing on the floor, from the people who used-to-be, as the ground had swallowed them whole. It was as if Wonderland had rewritten their timelines to hide the nature of war, and for that, Yeonjun was almost grateful. He wished their stardust souls a peaceful transition back into Wonderland’s magic, and Beomgyu squeezed his hand as they continued to trudge through their broken world, back to the Heart’s torn-apart palace.

Their souls were aching, defeated, even as the celebrations from the higher ups continued. Even so far away, Yeonjun thought he could still hear the music and the cheers. It made him sick to his stomach, yet he still wiped his face and continued. The flowers no longer sang for them, and the petals of camellia that fluttered from Beomgyu’s nervous palms only fizzled and turned into nothing as they hit the floor.

Taehyun continued to sniffle as they walked, hiding themselves in the darkness and the soured, dirty terrain, until the floor beneath them became cracked and blackened and dead. 

“It used to be massive,” Taehyun sighed, shivering. “The palace.” 

It was as if the skies of Wonderland had opened on that day, and shot its powerful pulse of magic down onto the castle. The earth was mostly flattened here, though the ground puckered in uneasy chunks, like it too tried to open its jaws and eat all of the Hearts. Where there were once small streams feeding the Hearts’ extensive garden were only dried up wells. 

Yeonjun took a deep breath in, held it, and exhaled. He took the first, careful steps toward the ruins.

“Watch your feet. Hold onto me, we should search everywhere,” he cautioned. They didn’t need to be quiet, but Yeonjun found himself whispering anyways. Both his sword and Soobin’s at his side made uneasy noises, hitting each other with each step that Yeonjun took. With Beomgyu’s hand in his, and Taehyun’s hand in Beomgyu’s, they stepped over the rubble, sliding down collapsed pillars and leaving streaks of ash on their clothing as they fell deeper into the ruins of the castle. 

The night only grew colder, and despite their best searches, there was no trace of Soobin in the rubble. In a way, Yeonjun sighed in relief. If he made it out of here alive, that was all that he could ask for. Even if he could never see Soobin again- as long as he knew that Soobin was out there, that he was given just a small  _ sign _ -

Yeonjun gasped as his foot went right through a crumbling bit of tile, and he scrambled to hold himself on top of its dirty surface, feet dangling below. “Shit! Help me up,” he grit his teeth, grateful when both Taehyun and Beomgyu grabbed him by the wrists and helped him as he dragged his knees back onto the ledge.

“It’s so dark, I don’t know if we can do this,” Beomgyu grunted, giving one last pull until Yeonjun was laying on the tile, heaving breaths in to calm himself. “How did the ground split open like that?” 

Taehyun helped Yeonjun up by the elbow, until he was once again on his feet. “I thought… I thought the palace was flat.”

Yeonjun’s eyebrows came together. In this dark night, only illuminated by the mourning moon and the strange colors, Yeonjun felt around with his foot until he found the ledge again. “Did the palace have a basement?” He asked, squatting onto the ledge and gripping it tightly, looking into the pitch-black pit below. 

“I don’t think so?” Beomgyu answered, sharing a confused look with Taehyun. “Are we even standing on the first floor right now though? Everything collapsed on that day.” 

“We haven’t been climbing,” Taehyun answered with a shake of his head. “We’ve been… descending. Look, back at where we came.”

True to Taehyun’s word, when they craned their heads to look back, it became clear that they had been lowering themselves more and more into this pit at the center of what used to be the palace. The rubble stood meters over their head in the distance. Soon enough, even the light of the moon wouldn’t be able to permeate this far distance into the ruins. 

Yeonjun turned back to the pit into which he’d nearly fallen. He lay himself down onto his stomach, pitching his head down into the hole. It was silent except for their cold breaths in the night, and Yeonjun turned his face to listen more intently. When the ground rumbled, even just once, Yeonjun clenched his jaw and pulled himself up. “There’s something down there.”

Beomgyu looked thoroughly unamused. “And if it’s a jabberwocky?” He asked, grimacing at the idea. “Wonderland is unearthing. There could be a monster down there.”

“And what if it’s Soobin?” Yeonjun asked instead with a frown. He watched the dark expressions of his friends, noticed how the two of them were holding onto each others’ elbows like maybe they too, were hoping that whatever Yeonjun heard was their missing fourth piece. “Taehyun, can you get us down there?”

Taehyun nodded. He reached for the whip at his waist, and as if constructed by a million and one tulip stalks, its length extended and quickly wrapped around the sturdiest piece of rubble that he could find. Taehyun gave it an experimental tug and tossed the end of it down into the pit until the handle made a small click, when it touched the floor. “Try not to mess with the stems too much.”

“I’ll go down first, but follow closely,” Yeonjun instructed, feeling the weight of the thing in his hands before he wrapped himself around it, slowly sliding down the tightly woven tulip stalks until his feet hit the floor. Just as he was feeling around, he’d caught the end of Beomgyu’s shoe, guiding him to the ground with a firm hand to his back, and doing the same for Taehyun. It was difficult as it was, doing so in complete darkness, and once Taehyun’s heels had hit the ground as well, the whip retracted, near sentient as it neatly curled itself back onto Taehyun’s hip.

Something was dripping, leaking like water, further into the darkness. Its rhythmic drops echoed, like the pit they’d slid into extended far, far into the earth. Without needing to say anything, Yeonjun could feel someone’s fingers gripping the back of his jacket, and he could tell by the shuffle of the boots on the floor behind him that he and his two friends were ready to go in, further into the darkness.

They walked slowly, squinting their eyes at something far in the distance. It flickered like a light. This tunnel in the ruins lead to a teasing sprite, almost like it was dangling something precious in front of their faces, and all at once, a bright red light erupted from Yeonjun’s hip and he found himself shoved against one of the tunnels’ walls, coughing on his spit from the force of the shove.

“Hyung!”

Yeonjun cursed, feeling blood in his mouth from having accidentally bitten down onto his tongue, and the  _ something _ pushing at his shoulders and had suddenly let up.

“Yeonjun-hyung?” 

It was like the sky had finally fallen around them, as the red light of Soobin’s scabbard at Yeonjun’s hip mellowed into a light flicker, as if it were a flame, and right in front of Yeonjun’s eyes, there he was.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun breathed, and the hands that had shoved him to the wall were now tender, shaking as they glided over his collarbones and the back of his neck and down his arms.

“Yeonjun-hyung,” Soobin repeated, voice wet as he gathered Yeonjun into his arms, holding tightly as if it’d hurt even more to be apart. “Oh my god. Junnie-hyung, I’ve been- I’m so-”

“I know, I know,” Yeonjun whispered, rubbing his palms up and down the other’s broad back. He could feel tears in Soobin’s coat. It felt used and dirty, but at least Soobin, sniffling harshly into Yeonjun’s shoulder, was here. “I’m here, I’m so sorry, I’m  _ sorry _ , we’re here.” 

For all this long month, Yeonjun had both Beomgyu and Taehyun at his side. It broke his heart to imagine that Soobin had been here in the darkness of the ruins of the Hearts for so long.

Alone.

“It’s supposed to be a secret place, but I overheard about it once as I was leaving the court,” Soobin explained. Deep into the earth, a part of the palace had not yet crumbled. It was like its own little bubble, a place that was otherworldly but still very much ‘Wonderland’ in nature. “I’m sure they’re going to try and come back here eventually, but for now, this was the only place I could make a shelter in.”

Something like ancient plants gave off a strange glow with their magic, illuminating the room in unnatural colors. It was too dreamlike that it made Yeonjun’s eyes sore. Judging on how Beomgyu and Taehyun were constantly rubbing their eyes and squinting, they must have thought the same thing. The room was small, like a secret basement with vines twisting this way and that around it. Yeonjun reached out to pet some of the white rose petals, soothing the agitated ones that seemed to rustle.

“You probably want this,” Yeonjun murmured, once they’d finally been able to keep their emotions at bay. “It’s been wanting you this whole time.” 

He removed Soobin’s sword from his side, careful as he placed the treasure back in the other ace’s hands, but Soobin hardly looked at it, keeping his eyes on Yeonjun instead. “I don’t care about a  _ sword _ as half as much as I care about you.”

Yeonjun’s breath caught in his throat, and he wound an arm around Soobin’s shoulder, pulling him in and refusing to let go. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too. All of you. I’m glad everyone’s okay,” Soobin whispered, turning his head to look at Beomgyu and Taehyun’s wide eyes. “Um, but… I mean obviously these aren’t the best circumstances to be in. This place is going to keep crumbling.”

“We were meaning to tell you,” Taehyun said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Beomgyu-hyung and I found something. We think the rumors are true, there has to be a place where we can change this place’s fate.”

“There were claw marks everywhere at the Jokers’ land. The place was covered in hyacinths as tall as trees, but the underside of their leaves were glowing and dripping something.”

Yeonjun watched Soobin nod, stare at the floor like he was digging around his brain for answers. “If we can make out the path that the Joker kid took, we might be able to find it.”

“What are we even looking for?” Yeonjun asked with a frown.

“I think.... We’re looking for a throne.” 


	3. Chapter 3

He didn’t feel right.

Nothing about this felt right. 

After Soobin had escaped his execution, he’d done his best to keep himself away from the sun. Being a supposed traitor to your court meant certain death from the Hearts, and simply being the undead ace of Hearts would be grounds for instant death by any of the other suits. It was difficult at first, traveling in his tunnel of vines under the earth, scavenging for things to eat and disgusting water wherever he could manage it. His body felt strong and weak at the same time, but aces only ever came once a generation, and failure would mean the end of their world.

He thought about the precious people in his life. They had so many years left in their own timelines. It would be a waste to let the people before them ruin their youth like this and not feel remorse over it. There were secrets upon secrets, hidden deep in basements and protected by a lock. It sent the message clearly:

It has always been this way. We refuse to change.

Soobin never liked that sentiment.

He spent his time carefully, following Beomgyu and Taehyun as the duo escorted them quietly to the place they had found before the true uprising began. Soobin tried to keep his eyes forward, to ignore the burnt logs that once used to be tall, beautiful trees. All of his precious rose bushes had been incinerated in the fire, and with every step, he felt like he could hear the crisp petals crunching under his boots.

Yeonjun was there at his side, holding him by his shoulders or waist or hands, careful to cup his face in a palm when Soobin’s gaze became a little too far away. There was nothing and yet everything for Yeonjun to lose, if they didn’t come out of this victorious, Soobin realized. He wished it could be a relief, but it only added to the fear that he swallowed down like an annoying ghost in his chest. 

In his month alone, Soobin had searched and searched, and what he found, he would never tell to his closest friends.

Hidden in the rubble of the palace, Soobin found all the evidence that he needed. The beaten, burned, throne of Wonderland was nothing but a fake. Its wood split and cried, and Soobin had set it on fire a second time, just to watch as the “gems” on the headrest melted away. And underneath, the inscriptions had blackened from their once-gold linings, and Soobin had found the mark of Spades everywhere. Perhaps it was never the Heart’s Wonderland to begin with. If that were the case; if there was a history covered up somewhere before their time, then Soobin would give it all up to stop the end of the world.

He wearily looked at Yeonjun, who tugged him along. His shoulders were straightened, like he was confident in their decision. 

Should this be the truth, if they could fix the timeline, Yeonjun would have to go on without Soobin. With the Spades on the throne, and with the Hearts being the one to ruin history as they did, there was no place for Soobin. There would be no way he’d be pardoned; he would be cast out with the rest of his suit.

Soobin figured that it would be okay. If Yeonjun and Taehyun and Beomgyu could live beautiful lives, he would keep this secret in his pocket and take it one day to the grave with him.

“The sky’s crumbling still,” Beomgyu whispered, and the other three turned their heads to the sky. Just as he’d said, it was as if the starry space above was warping into colors, crumbling into weak twinkles of Wonderland before it managed to hit the floor. “We should hurry.”

He wanted to owe it to Yeonjun, for somehow knowing where to find him. He wanted to praise the hell out of Beomgyu and Taehyun, who had also managed to scout and make sense of the situations on their own, but something still didn’t feel right.

“When we find it,” Soobin said, after the night sky bled into a dreary sunrise, “what will we do next?”

They were exhausted from their journey, dragging their feet and taking more frequent pauses against the glowing trees and illuminated stone on the paths. Wonderland was a strange world, and the sentient mushrooms seemed to also be uncomfortable, hiding their faces into the dirt with each step that the four of them took.

“If the Joker was right, and- why wouldn’t he be right if the Hearts reacted like they did,” Taehyun said, being the first to answer, “Then maybe Yeonjun-hyung is the one who has to take it. If he wants to.”

If he can.

It was too much, but when Yeonjun looked at him, a fire burned in his eyes. “Once a generation,” was all Yeonjun had said, but he squeezed his fingers around Soobin’s longer ones, and that was all the confirmation that he needed. Still, something twisted in Soobin’s stomach, an ache like he’d never felt before.

It must have been the exhaustion. 

“Let’s rest a while, and we’ll keep going in the morning.”

The ‘morning’ came a little too soon, and a little too purple. The sun became a strange hue, and the grayish land instead was cast in lavender light instead of its usual beautiful brightness. Since his escape, Soobin had done his best to stay out of the sun, for fear that he’d be spotted somewhere and killed without question. 

“Has it always been like this?” Soobin asked, gritting his teeth as they climbed over rock, a stony fortress that held back where the Jacks resided. At least where they used to. It was like the rubble never really ended, and the more and more that they entered the Jacks’ residence, the more the image of a beautiful Wonderland was stripped from their minds.

The place was a total dump.

“Since the Hearts were run out? Yeah,” Beomgyu scoffed, helping Taehyun up one of the larger rocks. Their muscles were sore from their travels, and in the strange, purple light, Soobin felt like his spacial awareness was turning to mush. It felt like the world was warping uncomfortably around them. “Everything turned to shit.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. Even the place where the Jacks resided was nothing more than creaky old, abandoned fixtures and checkered tile that’d cracked and come apart from the paths. The iron gates cried when they pushed on them, and in random areas, giant hyacinth stalks towered over the path. True to Taehyun and Beomgyu’s word, the ground was torn up, as if it’d been clawed.

Even worse, the place was completely empty. The four of them tread carefully, keeping to the side. The leaves of the towering hyacinths practically bent down toward the path, creating broken tunnels that uncomfortably filtered the light of the purple sun. The undersides of them glowed strangely in white, like the veins of the massive plants were pulsing with life, and Soobin clenched his jaw, unsure. 

It was okay. They would be okay. With the four of them, they could walk this strange path. The ripped up bits of stems oozed something gross and sticky onto the path, and each of them walked single filed, dodging the weird, steaming puddles.

A cat meowed far in the distance of the once-beautiful land.

“Wait,” Yeonjun whispered with a pull to Soobin’s sleeve, and Soobin quickly halted, walking into the other’s shoulder by mistake. “Look at that.”

A rabbit at the end of the tunnel stared at them with uncomfortably red eyes. Its nose twitched, and it rubbed its face with its paws, once, twice, before shuffling to the side. The indents that its paws made on the ground left glowing, white marks, not dissimilar to the glowing veins of the massive hyacinths. With one last quirk of its head, it turned and began running.

Attached to its hip twinkled a set of keys.

“Catch it!” Beomgyu urged, shoving Yeonjun and Soobin’s shoulders as he began running after the fast, almost spirit-like white rabbit. Their boots against the shattered tile of the path made noises that echoed in the Jokers’ hyacinth forest, clanging like the loudest chimes of a grandfather clock. “Wait, rabbit!”

The rabbit looked over its shoulder and without hesitating, dove into the side of a rocky hill, its entire frame shimmering white as it disappeared behind it. Beomgyu, frustrated and out of breath, drew his foot back to kick the stone, and promptly slipped right into it, dragged in with another puff of white, shimmery magic.

“Beomgyu!” Soobin and Yeonjun both shouted, reaching out for his hand, but barely missing it as Beomgyu seemingly disappeared into the stone. Soobin shuddered, hearing the other’s cry grow distant.

Where Soobin and Yeonjun had frozen in place, shocked by the way that Beomgyu had just disappeared, Taehyun was frantically feeling around the stone with his jaw clenched. “Don’t just stand there- help me find the opening!” He hissed, dropping to his knees. “Beomgyu-hyung! Hyung!” 

Just as quickly as Beomgyu had been sucked into the earth, Taehyun toppled right in, except that time, Yeonjun was quick to grab Taehyun by the elbow, and like a chain reaction, he’d pulled Soobin by their clasped hands. 

Soobin’s stomach uncomfortably turned as the land around them warped and rewarped itself. It was an endless pit, deep into the earth, but the walls bent and twisted like stretched out balloons, and Soobin could hear laughter at the far end of it, like children teasing each other over fallen ice cream and riding their tricycles up and down one meter tall ramps like there wasn’t a care in the world. 

The world was purple- no it was orange and blue. It was purple and green, then suddenly blue and yellow, and finally the light at the very bottom wrapped them in white, and when Soobin opened his eyes again, his feet were flat on the floor, though he dangerously swayed.

“Soobin? Soobin-hyung?” Beomgyu’s concerned voice said, and though Soobin groaned from his dizziness, he reached out for the figure in front of him and held him firmly by the shoulders.

“Stop, I’m going to throw up,” he warned, grinding his teeth as he continued to groan. They remained there, silent until the feeling passed and Soobin could finally open his eyes. Yeonjun was there, only a foot or two away, holding Soobin firmly around the waist as Soobin kept himself steady by the other’s shoulders. 

“Soobin, it took you forever to get up here,” Yeonjun said with a nervous shake to his voice. He cleared his throat, bringing a hand up to cup the back of Soobin’s neck in some silent comfort instead. “We fell. Or, we came up from the ground? I remembered flipping somewhere.”

“Or something like that,” Taehyun mumbled, gesturing upward, to the sky.

Above them was a ceiling of sorts, but it looked more like a mirror from the top view. Soobin quickly looked back at his feet, afraid of getting a second wave of nausea. Little, white rose petals fell from his hair, as they tended to do when he was having trouble getting a grip on himself. “ _ Please _ someone tell me you caught the rabbit.”

“I did, I caught the rabbit,” Beomgyu answered, opening his hand and showing Soobin the twinkling keys on his hand. “But… Sorry about that, I didn’t know it would just... “ He sighed. Soobin couldn’t blame him; wherever they were now, the rabbit must have wanted them to be here.

And it was a strange place entirely. There was no natural light here, wherever they’d fallen. Instead, multicolored lanterns were hung across artificial, glass trees. The trees twinkled between each other, and at the far end of this strange place was a table that seemed to stretch on and on forever, covered in tea cups and cakes and glass jars of cookies that read “eat me!” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Soobin said, smoothing the part of Yeonjun’s coat that he’d accidentally crinkled in his tight grip. He let go of the older, almost sheepishly, though Yeonjun continued to stare at him with concern. “What is this place?”

“Dunno, but,” Yeonjun started, keeping one arm carefully around Soobin’s waist. “There’s a door over there, and we have a set of keys? I think we should try it.” 

Soobin paled in the face.

“When we’re ready,” Yeonjun quickly added, and Soobin nodded, watching past Yeonjun’s shoulder as Taehyun and Beomgyu curiously poked at the teapots and jars of sweets and cookies and cakes. They looked at the food as if they were starved for days, and Soobin could only shakily nod, feeling the same ache in his stomach as the others did.

“Yeah. When we’re ready.”


	4. Chapter 4

_ ‘They’re safe to eat.’ _

Soobin jolted, whipping his head to look around for the unknown voice, but the same room stared back at him. Beomgyu and Taehyun were investigating the impossibly long tea table, looking at its contents and tipping the contents of teapots into cups to figure out what was inside of it. Yeonjun was fiddling around with the keys somewhere, looking at the tiny door that they’d found earlier.

_ ‘If you’re hungry, eat the foods that are displayed, but not the ones in the jars.’ _

Soobin looked to the mirror ceiling that time, only seeing himself in the reflection. There was no one else in this pit that they’d fallen into. The rabbit had even disappeared somewhere, maybe along the crystal-glass trees. He stepped closer to the table, watching as Beomgyu and Taehyun sorted out some treats by some kind of method on the plates. 

“Hey, leave the stuff in the weird jars alone, okay?” He said to them.

Taehyun shared a look with Beomgyu before nodding. “We were planning on keeping them covered anyways.”

_ ‘Good. They’re clever. There’s a teal jar under one of the chairs. You’ll need that.’ _

Soobin felt a chill at the back of his neck. He wasn’t even sure why he was listening to this stranger’s voice, but it resounded off of Soobin’s skull in gentle echoes, and it didn’t seem like anyone else was hearing the same thing as him. The voice was boyish, a little too young, almost, and despite its… creepy nature, Soobin wasn’t afraid.

He felt like he wanted to listen.

“Yeonjun-hyung?” Soobin called, bending down to look underneath the chairs at the table. “Can you help me with something?”

“Huh? Yeah, give me a second,” Yeonjun answered, standing up from where he was near laying down on the floor, jiggling the tiny door that they’d found. It was a third the size of a regular door, and they could maybe make it through if they sneaked through on their bellies, but the keys were much too large to be used on the door’s lock. “What are you up to?”

“I think we need to be looking for something else here. That thing’s not going to work on the lock, right?” Soobin said, waddling to the next chair and taking a peek underneath that one. “I guess I… had a feeling. There’s all that stuff on the table, but wouldn’t that be a distraction?”

“Like a decoy,” Yeonjun hummed, crouching beside Soobin and looking under the table. “You take this side, and I’ll take that side?”

Soobin nodded. “Take a cookie too. Was that your stomach that growled just now?”

“Don’t shame me,” Yeonjun huffed, flushing pink in his cheeks. “It’s been a really busy journey. Cookies aren’t necessarily a nutritious meal, by the way,” he mumbled, making his way to the other side of the table, much to Soobin’s amusement. 

It only took them five rows of chairs to search, before Soobin felt around the floor and found a small vial, capped with a cork. Inside rattled a smaller set of keys, and Soobin stood up a little too fast from the ground, knocking his head on the table on the way up.

“Ooh, that had to hurt!” Beomgyu teased, leaning over from two chairs down. He and Taehyun had successfully sorted the cookies and tea into some system, and he set down his plate of cookies before reaching over to rub at Soobin’s sore head. “Aw, you alright? You know, when I was younger they’d like… mix salt and water and rub it on bumps to make it hurt less.” 

“How does salt help a bump?” Soobin grumbled, rubbing at the sore spot on his head. He shoved the small glass vial into his pocket for now, not wanting to forget it somewhere while they snacked. 

Beomgyu shrugged, offering his hand to Soobin, who gladly took it as he stood up properly. “Dunno. I always ended up licking it off anyways.”

“That’s kinda gross.”

“Never said it wasn’t.”

Soobin rolled his eyes but squeezed Beomgyu’s palm in thanks anyway. 

Taehyun and Yeonjun waited for them at the end of the table, and by the time that Soobin and Beomgyu had made it back to them, they were already taking small bites out of the cookies that Taehyun had stacked. 

“Finally,” Yeonjun teased, slumping a little into one of the chairs at the massive tea table. The lanterns above swayed with a lonely breeze. “We didn’t want to start eating without you two, but we couldn’t help ourselves.”

“You could’ve gone ahead,” Beomgyu snorted, pouring tea for the four of them. 

“You’d get whiny if we did,” Taehyun shrugged, and Beomgyu pretended to tip the teapot over the other’s plate of sweets. 

_ ‘That key will work, but it only works once. Keep the big keys safe, if you ever want to make it back.’ _

Soobin shoved a cookie into his mouth. Whoever was giving him this advice was obviously well versed on this travel in the unknown. He didn’t know if he liked that or was concerned about it. The closer they were to finding the true throne though, Soobin thought, then the closer they’d be to finding peace for themselves and their people.

“I found that thing by the way,” Soobin said, once they’d had their moment to rest and fend off some of the exhaustion that was settling into their bones from earlier. Their journey, although not being very long at all, was taxing on their minds, and Soobin could tell that it wasn’t just him who felt that way. “Check this out?”

“Wow,” Yeonjun said first, taking the jar from Soobin’s palm. “These keys are so tiny. They’ll probably be the perfect size for that door. Let’s check it out, then?”

“Do you want to open it right now? What happened to getting sleep or something,” Beomgyu frowned, and Soobin could tell that this was not out of brattiness or anything like that. He must have been just as nervous as everyone else was. “We don’t even know what’s behind there.”

“I don’t think I can go to bed without knowing what’s behind it,” Taehyun answered instead, resting his elbows on the elaborate table. “And if it turns out that we can rest beyond it, we should try it.”

Soobin nodded, but put a comforting hand on Beomgyu’s shoulder anyway. “I agree with Taehyun. We should at least open it up and see what’s inside. As long as we don’t let the door close, we should be fine.”

“That settles it then,” Yeonjun said with a sigh, standing up from the table. He picked up the chair that he was sitting in and started waddling it to the tiny door. The other three followed closely, peering in closely when Yeonjun had pushed the key into the lock and turned it. The key disintegrated quickly, turning into silver dust as it touched the floor, and Yeonjun gestured for the three to push the chair closer. 

“We can keep it open using this,” Yeonjun explained, pulling the door open and keeping it that way with the chair. No light came from the other side of the door, but Yeonjun lay on his stomach anyway and started to push his head and shoulders through the opening. “Oh! Coast clear, come in guys,” he called, crawling through the tiny place.

_ ‘He’s right, it’s safe.’ _

Again, Soobin quickly looked around his shoulder and shivered when he found nothing. Taehyun and Beomgyu had already crossed by the time that Soobin realized that he truly was alone. The unknown voice said nothing more to him, and he shuddered one last sigh before crawling through the door.

This room had a sky, unlike the last. It seemed to stretch on for centuries. They seemed to be outside, though Soobin was near certain that they’d tumbled into these strange places. It certainly didn’t feel like Wonderland anymore, but Soobin didn’t want to voice these concerns to save from making the three others nervous as well. 

There were pillars, semi-crumbling but still surrounding the corners of the room as if they were a protective  _ something _ . At the end of this room, surrounded by the same glass trees as the previous room, was a shimmering, silver well.

“The water’s going in reverse,” Taehyun said, being careful as he peered deep inside.

“So we really are upside down, then,” Yeonjun added, feeling along the stone rim of the well. “It says something there…”

Soobin came in closer to take a look, not without warily taking one last glance behind him at the door that kept them from the tea room. “Huh? What’s it say?”

“Neverland,” Beomgyu read. “I’ve never heard of that before. This place is really weird.”

“Neverland,” Soobin repeated, looking into the well. Deep down there, all he saw was darkness, and he wondered if it was just a catch of the light from the moon, but Soobin could have sworn he saw blue and green light twinkling at him from below. “Doesn’t sound familiar at all.”

The more that Soobin stared into the well, the more he became mesmerized. It felt like his breath wanted to catch in his throat, and he pulled himself away from the ledge before he could get queasy just as he’d been when they’d fallen into the tea room. 

He was thankful that no one noticed. Something warned him about the well, made him continue to shiver, but he didn’t want to think about it anymore. After everything that he’d gone through in the past month and a half, all Soobin wanted to do was rest. 

“We’ll look some more in the morning. Maybe we should rest a while,” Soobin suggested, unsurprised to see three sets of equally tired eyes staring back at him. “As much as I like the pretty well, I think we can appreciate it more when we’re well rested?”

“I’m sleeping under the tea table,” Taehyun confidently answered. “It’s too bright everywhere else.”

“I’ll keep you company,” Beomgyu quickly offered, and the two of them looked to the tiny door, crawling back to the tea room and leaving Soobin and Yeonjun in this strange room.

Yeonjun immediately sighed, slumping somewhere at the base of one of the glass trees. He waved a hand at Soobin, calling him over, and Soobin didn’t hesitate to come over, taking a seat so closely that their thighs were pressed against each other. Yeonjun tossed an arm around Soobin’s shoulders, finally showing his exhaustion in front of someone instead of keeping it bottled up. 

“This is hell,” Yeonjun confessed quietly. 

“I’m not even sure,” Soobin answered with a sigh. “Everyone’s nervous. I have the feeling that we haven’t even experienced the worst of this yet.”

It was quiet between them, like the weight of the world was finally being settled onto their tired laps. Soobin wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and pretend like the world wasn’t falling apart. The silver well in the room gleamed and tempted them, but Soobin preferred to stay there, at Yeonjun’s side.

Some time had passed. Soobin had wished the both of them could’ve drifted to sleep, but the stress and realization was too much to allow them that pleasure.

“Soobin.”

The Heart lifted his weary head, unsurprised to find Yeonjun, glossy eyed. The both of them were so young; they didn’t cause the troubles passed onto them by the generation before. It wasn’t Soobin and Yeonjun who had started all the warring, but somehow, the guilt and danger and fear from all of it settled across their shoulders in heavy weights. “Do you think this will work?” Soobin asked instead, voice barely above a whisper. 

The glass tree beside them shuddered, and its leaves sounded like pretty chimes. Tucked away in that portal in the collapsed world, beneath the rubble of the overgrown hyacinth forest of Jokers, the light from the painted moon slipped through the cracked pillars’ sediment and illuminated the two of them just enough to see each others’ faces.

“I don’t know,” Yeonjun answered honestly. “But I think…. The four of us. We can change something for Wonderland, at least.” 

Soobin sighed, shuddering the breath out of his lungs. His elbows stung from the scabbing scrapes he’d gotten from living under the Hearts’ rubble, and sad little petals of white spilled onto the floor before disappearing into nothing but twinkles of light. “With you, hyung, I think... I would do anything to make this work. We come once a generation, right?” 

They intertwined their arms, huddled together in the dark, on the floor. Water pooled at the edge of one of the broken, glass trees, near it’s sadly exposed roots. Occasionally, little fragments of glass fell into the puddles, as if even it was crying along with the both of them. Soobin dabbed at Yeonjun’s little tears before taking care of his own, and the two of them stayed slumped for some time against each other, heads tilted against one another. It felt like being even a centimeter apart would be too painful.

“I’m sorry that this happened,” Yeonjun whispered, long after their sniffling had died down. Finally; this was the only conversation the two of them would have about Soobin’s imprisonment. Being captured, being sentenced to death if anyone were to see Soobin’s face, it’d finally been acknowledged. 

Soobin was grateful. He was grateful, but sad.

The both of them watched their hands, played with each others’ fingertips like they needed to be reminded just how it’d felt.

“I kind of deserved it,” Soobin humorlessly laughed. “I abandoned my suit.”

“You’re still a Heart,” Yeonjun reassured, intertwining their fingers, and Soobin was comforted in the way that it hid away his own suit’s symbol from his eyes. “When this is all done, you’ll be the Heart to set the suit straight. There isn’t a single… holy suit. You know that, right, Soobin-ah?” 

Soobin closed his sore eyes. He wanted to stay here, at their safe base of this abandoned place. “When all this is done,” he said instead, keeping his cheek comfortably at Yeonjun’s shoulder. The worn coat even felt comfortable against Soobin’s skin. “When all this is done, I just want to rest.”

He felt Yeonjun’s lips on his knuckles. “Soobin, I would give you this world if I could.”

* * *

The four of them stood there. The well was shimmering in bright, silver liquid, swirling in reverse to a point in the middle that poured into an endless pit. They could fit in there, if they went one at a time, but that would also mean they’d have to release each other’s hands and hope for the best. Looking between all of his friends, Soobin didn’t think of it to be a wise decision.

_ ‘You’re making a mistake. There’s nothing but pain down here.’ _

Soobin grit his teeth. What a terrible time for the voice to start speaking again. He wanted to hiss for it to shut up and leave them alone; they’d already gone through this much already. There was nothing more than Soobin wanted than to get this whole thing over with and return to normalcy.

He wanted to have tea time in the gardens with his close friends again. He needed to have the reassurance that everything was okay. But somewhere above, the sky was falling and crumbling, and the people in charge were blind to the disaster they’d caused. The sky was crying and mourning, and the magic was so thick that when Soobin had even been living beneath the rubble of the Hearts’ used-to-be palace, he could feel earth crying along with him. 

“So, the plan is, again?” Beomgyu said, voice breaking the silence that they’d shared over the well. 

“We go in there,” Taehyun answered him. “And then we find something.” 

“We don’t even know what we’re finding,” Beomgyu sighed. “I’m not trying to be a pessimist, I  _ swear _ . I’m just…” 

Afraid.

Everyone was afraid.

This wasn’t supposed to be their problem to fix; it just so happened that the four of them were born to do something like this in the first place.

Soobin and Yeonjun shared a look and squeezed each others’ hands.

“Even if we don’t find anything down there, at least we can say we’ve tried. I don’t know about you, but I think there has to be a reason for everything. There has to be a reason why we made it this far,” Yeonjun reassured. 

Yeonjun was such a natural leader, Soobin thought. It was true; a Spade was supposed to be in control of Wonderland. He could see it all from Yeonjun’s natural leadership skills, and yet the three of them turned to look at Soobin for confirmation. “I’ll go down first,” Soobin offered with a shaky breath. He knew they were looking to him for guidance as well, but all Soobin felt in his chest was dread.

It was eating away at his esophagus almost, and he swallowed around a dry throat. There were no other options than to go into this well, dive down into a place called Neverland; its etchings were crystal clear the more that the boys had the opportunity to look at it. There were strange arrows that pointed deep into its abyss and Soobin did his best to pretend that it wasn’t going to be another world-altering fall. 

In fact, none of them knew what was going on. 

Yeonjun gave Soobin’s hand one last squeeze as Soobin sat on the edge of the well, legs dangling inside. Surprisingly, the silvery liquid there splashed against his pants, but didn’t leave any trace of moisture on the fabric. He checked his side again for his sword, and pleased with finding it there, gave both Beomgyu and Taehyun a hug around their shoulders. 

_ ‘It won’t hurt.’ _

Soobin squeezed his eyes together.

_ ‘I’m so sorry this is happening.’ _

And Soobin jumped. 


	5. Chapter 5

Soobin landed first, on his feet just like how their first, surprise fall had been. Wooden signs posted “This way,” “That way,” “Wrong way,” and “Neverland” in a script that Soobin had never seen before. Down here, the entire world was dark and black. There was no sky, but something gave this place, overgrown with magical plants, an unfamiliar violet light, just as there had been up above in Wonderland. 

Could he even say that Wonderland was above them? Soobin had no idea where they were, but the stepstones on the floor were glowing a strange color- the same thing that they’d seen under the thick stalks of the giant hyacinths in the wasteland of the Jokers.

One by one, as if appearing out of nowhere, Taehyun, Beomgyu, and Yeonjun joined Soobin’s side. After fussing over one another and being certain that everyone was okay, they looked to the gleaming path and shared a moment of understanding.

“Let’s stay close to each other,” Soobin suggested, and it was natural the way the four of them linked together as they walked, just the four of them into an unknown wilderness. 

Something cawed in the distance, and the rustling around them had Soobin’s eyes sharp on their surroundings. This place was windless, somewhat void of life in contrast to how Wonderland was filled with sentient things. It didn’t take long for them to realize just how terrible the path was made, as if it's hardly been tread on. 

“I can’t see shit,” Beomgyu cursed, bending down to look at the glowing stones, and jolting backward when a bug scurried across one of the steps. Taehyun quickly squashed the thing beneath his foot. 

“Just stay close,” Yeonjun advised instead, and Soobin willed the white petals not to start falling from his hair. 

He didn’t want to show how anxious he was to anyone; there was too much relying on them right now. To get cold feet would mean the end of their journey, and Soobin didn’t want to leave unless they had victory in their hands. 

Something flickered at the end of the path, underneath all of the trees.

A white rabbit stood up on its legs and cleaned its ears with its paws before turning to look at the four of them. Its eyes were blue and green, blinking curiously, but strangely, those huge eyes had slitted pupils. Its equally huge ears stood on high alert, and as if realizing that it had been spotted, slowly started stepping away from the path before darting off to the side.

“Are we chasing it again?” Taehyun asked, flexing his fingers in Beomgyu’s hand. 

“No let’s- let’s not. Let’s take it slowly. If we get separated here…”

They understood, but picked up the pace as they followed where the white rabbit had darted off to. The woods only became thicker and thicker, though the sound of water running, as if it were crashing against a shore somewhere became louder and louder. 

“Oh look at this lot?” A woman’s voice sneered from above, and Soobin was quick to draw his sword, eyes darting around for the source of the voice. It was much different than the boyish voice that Soobin had been hearing in his mind, and considering that the other three had become similarly alert, he was certain that they’d heard this one.

“Ahaha! They’re so puny. Are they scentless too?” 

One of the stalks of the plants grew and bent over in front of the four, a face appearing on the massive petals of a flower. “This one is a rose, just like me! He’ll be a wonderful addition to my collection!”

“Collection?” Soobin found himself repeating, leaning far back from the face in the petals. 

The flower grinned, and when it did, Soobin gasped, finding thorns in place of its teeth. “My collection of silly, lost Hearts!” 

Vines swung out from beneath the massive flowers, and the boys were enveloped with laughter that twinkled like a song, but echoed far into the wood in sinister sneers. 

Beomgyu was the first to hit the floor, escaping the entangling vines and tossing camellia petals from his hands like a million blades into the faces of the flowers, though they didn’t let up, continuing to sing and laugh at the four of them. “Fight it, fight it!” Beomgyu called, gritting his teeth and grabbing Taehyun by the wrist, pulling him free from where he’d been struggling in one of the flowers’ massive leaves.

Soobin slashed at the vines as they came closer, the gems on the handle of his blade glinting as they caught on the strange light. The distorted, sinister faces of the flowers only continued to laugh and taunt. “What kind of garden do you come from?” A massive tiger lily roared, snapping its teeth at Yeonjun.

“None of your business!” Yeonjun grunted, pulling his arms free and bursting petals from his palms as well. “Fuck these things are annoying. If you were in Wonderland, I’d have plucked you all already!” 

Soobin erupted in vines from his own magic, gathering the bulk of the taunting stalks and gathering them into one bundle, though they didn’t uproot at all. “Get their stems!”

_ ‘You’ll do nothing with just the stems.’ _

The four of the struggled to keep the thorns away from their bodies, and Taehyun hit the floor, being dragged by the ankle for a solid meter before Beomgyu was able to gather him up again and continue to fend off the rancid flowers with his own ace’s petals. 

Soobin must have been the only one that saw them.

Coming from deep in the fire, hyacinths the size of an arm shot into the faces of the feathers, and one by one, they began to hiss and drop to the floor, erupting into colorful smoke as their song started teetering off into screeches. 

Soobin took the opportunity, resheathing his sword and grabbing Yeonjun and Beomgyu, who was holding onto Taehyun, by the elbow as he started rushing toward the end of the path. The flowers fell like trees behind them, kicking dust into the violet light, and the four of them coughed and wheezed by the time they made it to the end of the path- and subsequently the end of the forest. 

There was an ocean there instead that seemed to go on forever, though if Soobin squinted, he could maybe see a ship far off into the distance.

“Don’t question it, don’t question it,” Soobin said, continuing to tug his friends along with him, down the shore until they were truly out of the woods. “Just keep walking forward.”

“Look out there, do you see that?” Taehyun asked.

How could they not see it? There was a platform of earth, hovering in the sky. Now that their view wasn’t blocked by strange wooden signs or thick forest and killer flowers, it was clear that the land in front of them was filled with hedges upon hedges, and strange buildings of sorts at random intervals. Aside from the ship way out of the distance to the east, something shifted in the water there too. It circled the ship in dark shadows, and Soobin swallowed.

“It has to be up there. I have no clue what else would be up there,” Yeonjun answered with a nod. “We just have to… we get through here, and then I can get on that throne and do whatever the fuck needs to happen to… Ugh.”

“It’s alright,” Soobin quickly comforted. “It’s not like we really know what’s going on.”

That was the uneasy part. They knew vaguely what to do, but everything was coming like a million and one surprises. Yeonjun watched Soobin with a frown, but turned in to wrap his arms around the other in a loose hug, if just to comfort himself. Soobin, surprised but not uninviting, returned the hug and looked over Yeonjun’s shoulder to see how Taehyun and Beomgyu shared a look. 

“How about we rest for right now. I think you have a cut up here,” Soobin had whispered, pulling away from Yeonjun’s hug to swipe his thumb along a scratch on Yeonjun’s cheek.

The older had hissed, but judging from the slack of his shoulders, Soobin knew that he’d agreed. “Yeah. I like the sound of that.”

“Go ahead, I’m going to look for something along the shore first,” Soobin said, feeling something pulling him toward the water, though he wanted to keep that secret from the rest of the aces anyway. They gave him a wary look but nodded anyways, perhaps thinking that Soobin needed a moment alone to think about what had just happened. 

“Don’t be out of sight,” Taehyun warned, though he gathered both Yeonjun and Beomgyu, dutifully leading them away. 

Soobin let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He inched closer to the strange ocean. It was too still, but seemed to span out for forever. Its reflective surface didn’t waver too much, even as Soobin poked at the water with his foot. 

_ “You there- Heart.” _

Soobin didn’t want to turn to look. 

_ “I can help you. I know where to find the throne.” _

With the other Aces further ahead on the trail, Soobin stared into the reflective surface of the water to find a face next to his own, standing nervously behind him. 

The person, a ghost, was nothing more than a boy, covered head to toe in hyacinth petals. Even though he was somewhat translucent, the petals were very much opaque and alive. 

“What do you want?” Soobin asked, shoulders falling in exhaustion. The four Aces had already gone through so much trouble, being in this strange world- Neverland, the postings had said- to begin with, that dealing with something like a ghost boy on top of dangerous, talking flowers, was pushing Soobin’s mind to the brink.

“It’s a maze out there,” The ghost anxiously said, looking at his shoes. _“_ I would know. I remember the way. I can show you how to reach the throne.”

“Soobin-hyung!”

He turned around, seeing Taehyun wave at him from further down the path. “We’re settling here, whenever you’re ready!” 

“You have to be more careful. The Cat has been guarding the throne. It’s the one tossing this world around.”

“You’re the one who shot the flowers, weren’t you?”

The ghost looked down at his own body, and then at Soobin’s almost sadly. “Yeah, that was me.”

Soobin nodded. The shore sounded more gentle than he remembered it.

“You’re the last Joker, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” The ghost repeated, tucking his own hair behind his ear. A sad hyacinth petal hit the floor and dissolved into nothing. “I’ve been trying to talk you out of this. You should have… should have just let the place burn.”

“You know I couldn’t have done that,” Soobin sighed, looking out into the distance, where the other three were figuring something out along the shore. It seemed like Taehyun was starting a fire, and the smoke reminded me of the way that the flowers had all gone up in colorful smoke once they’d been shot in the face by those hyacinth arrows. “Especially not now. There’s too much I have to look forward to.”

“I can help you, I promise to help you,” the ghost urged, this time trying to reach out and grab Soobin’s hands, but they passed right through Soobin’s body. The ghost looked torn, swallowing thickly and folding his arms across his chest instead. “Maybe… maybe you can help me get out of here too.”

“Help us to the end and then I’ll see what I can do,” Soobin promised too. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Hueningkai,” the ghost said, picking his eyes up this time. The flowers constantly blooming in his hair sent a twinkle of petals onto the floor, where they’d been eaten and absorbed into the world. 

“I’m Soobin,” the ace introduced himself, but even his name felt like a burden. “I’d really appreciate it if you can help us get in and out of here.”

The ghost boy’s eyes shone in brilliant color, and he nodded. The determination in his expression was enough; it really was all that Soobin needed to see. 

The alliance they made was easy, and since the other aces couldn’t see the ghost flutter around behind Soobin, Soobin did his part to pretend he wasn’t talking to thin air. Even when Yeonjun sought him out for a good cuddle and a sigh of relief, Soobin readily opened his arms and pretended not to notice how the ghost sadly wrapped his arms around himself.

He wondered just how long was Hueningkai wandering around Neverland, just hoping that someone would show up and save him.

“What was it like?” Soobin whispered. After some time had passed, the other three were fast asleep by the burning fire. He wanted to stay up a bit longer and tend to it, hoping to keep them warm in this dark world. The ghost beside him seemed unbothered by the chill, but fire cast shadows down his pretty nose. Soobin didn’t have a reason to not trust the ghost anymore, especially after being able to confirm the other’s legitimacy. In a way, it made Soobin pity the poor Joker. 

“Hm?” Hueningkai hummed, turning his head to curiously look at Soobin. 

“What was it like… coming here? Finding the throne?” 

An odd silence fell between them, the weight of it so heavy that the crackles of the wood from the fire pit they’d made didn’t permeate Soobin’s ears at all. The three of his friends- well four of them, now that Soobin was sure enough to call Hueningkai at least an acquaintance- had traveled all this way without really… knowing what they were doing. They had a vague idea and a hope of something that could change the reality happening in the world above them, but none of them could say for sure that any of this was going to work.

“I don’t think it was my destiny to really come here,” Hueningkai confessed with a low sigh. “I remember crying and crying, and then a Cat appeared with sweet words and kind smiles and soft fur. When it told me to follow, then I followed. I was led by its words, and it reassured me that nothing would go wrong. I didn’t know what would happen- since I’m a Joker, I’m not even a part of any one suit. The throne rejected me. Somewhere there is my body. I know I was turned to stone.”

Soobin felt an odd chill go down his spine, when Hueningkai looked at Soobin carefully before turning his gaze to the fast asleep Yeonjun on the floor. The oldest was sleeping peacefully, as if there were no dangers around their peaceful fire pit. Soobin could only wish him the happiest dreams instead of these nightmarish illusions of this realm.

“It was the most painful thing I had experienced. Sitting there and waiting for the crown to form on your head. Forcing yourself to feel everyone’s past fears and pains. The madness eats at your mind until you can’t take it anymore.”

Hueningkai sat with his knees pulled up to his chest. 

“When you give yourself up to the throne… The field blooms around you. At first, I thought it was beautiful. The Cat who helped me suddenly was gone, and the illusion of a beautiful land crumbled right in front of me. I never felt so alone.”

Soobin didn’t want to look at the ghost. The dried hyacinth petals fell from Hueningkai’s eyes and onto the floor, though they were absorbed by the soil without leaving a single trace. He scooted himself closer to the other’s body, and although Hueningkai’s form wasn’t exactly solid, it wasn’t  _ empty  _ either. He wrapped an arm around the other’s shoulder, having to support the weight of his arm by himself. “I’m sorry, Hueningkai…”

“It’s okay. I didn’t really have a choice to do it, but in a way… if I didn’t, then you guys wouldn’t come, you know? I’m hopeful. I just hope he knows what he’s getting into, by choosing the throne.” 

The two of them watched Yeonjun again. Soobin saw the still healing scrapes on his cheek and forehead, and how even though he knew the other was in pain, he didn’t say a word about it to him or any of their friends. He knew that Yeonjun didn’t want to be a burden, and it killed Soobin to think that he couldn’t help Yeonjun through his pain. 

“You should rest too,” Hueningkai said after one last wipe of his face. It was as if he’d never cried to begin with. “I’ll watch over you all and the fire. Ghosts don’t really need to sleep.”


	6. Chapter 6

Since Hueningkai had explained to Soobin the horrors of Neverland and the throne, Soobin had been seeing strange things everywhere. He found imprints of Yeonjun’s pansies on stones and on surfaces that no one else really seemed to see. The faces of the flowers were usually welcoming when it was Yeonjun who created them, but the ones hidden in the structures and on the bark of the trees looked more like skulls than anything else.

Then, came the dreams.

Whenever they stopped to rest, on their way to the entrance of the maze that Hueningkai told him about, Soobin would dream about the most terrible things.

Yeonjun was always dripping white and violet into a pool under his feet. Although he looked beautiful, his skin was pale, and the nest of branches on his head and the field of pansies at his feet were the only color on Yeonjun’s otherwise white skin. 

Each time, there was only Yeonjun tied to the throne. Each time, he never moved. Each time, Soobin wanted to vomit at seeing the large violet mark across the other’s throat. 

Yeonjun, every morning after the nightmares, cupped Soobin’s damp cheeks in his hand and smooth the tiniest tears away. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay,” Yeonjun reassured in little whispers. “Are you having terrible dreams? It’s okay, Soobin-ah. Look, we’re so close there already, and then we can go home,” Yeonjun promised.

And it was true; they were stepping closer and closer to the maze. All that separated them from the steps to the throne was that damn hedge maze. Soobin shook his head, swallowing around his dry throat. “I don’t know if I want this anymore,” Soobin confessed. 

Every night, the vision stayed clear in Soobin’s mind; Yeonjun was tied to the throne, and he dripped his magic all over the throne, lifeless. 

“It doesn’t get any easier. It’ll be just as difficult,” Hueningkai whispered to Soobin one night, when Soobin had refused to go to bed. “It hurts more than you can imagine. If you really want Yeonjun to take the throne, there’s a chance that he won’t make it out.”

“Don’t say that,” Soobin quickly hushed, and Hueningkai stood from where he’d been sitting on the ground.

“And what, lie to you? It’s so painful, Soobin-hyung. I lost someone important to me once, and the second time, I’ve lost myself. If he should turn to stone like I have, you’ll never feel his touch again. Please listen to me when I say there has to be something else.”

“It was so clear,” Soobin groaned, ruffling his fingers nervously through his fringe. “What I saw in the rubble of the Hearts, someone has to be there. I don’t… I don’t want that to be Yeonjun. I can’t let it be him, don’t you understand me?”

The two of them looked at each other sadly, understanding. 

Soobin scrubbed at his eyes, wanting to keep the moisture hidden far, far away. “There’s nothing left for Hearts up there… If I can take it, then I will. I’ll save him, Hueningkai, but I’ll need your help when we get there. Even if it hurts. If I have to give up everything, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to make this stop.”

Hueningkai sadly sat himself back down. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into…”

They were alone that night. 

It was even stranger, in the morning, when Taehyun would stare at Soobin’s ragged state, and equally exhausted, just shake his head. His lips were pressed together despite the noise in his throat, and Soobin’s eyes widened, realizing that Taehyun had been cursed to silence somewhere.

His eyes burned in silent rage at Soobin, and Soobin could only look away and hope that Taehyun didn’t see the fear in his own irises. 

The entrance to the maze was lackluster. It was a simple, iron gate into the hedges.

“We’ll stay together, right?” Beomgyu clarified. Since they’d entered this place, he and Taehyun were inseparable, and Soobin couldn’t blame him. Even the idea of being far away from Yeonjun was enough to make him hurt and afraid too.

“It’ll take forever to figure out the maze that way,” Yeonjun warily said, and although everyone was thinking the same thing, they’d been too afraid to voice it.

“You can follow me, I think I know where I’m going. It’s just an intuition, but you have to trust me,” Soobin insisted, holding Yeonjun by the hands. He could tell that Yeonjun was looking deep into his pupils, looking for any reason not to believe Soobin, and relieved when he found nothing ingenuine there. “I know where to go. When… When I was alone and searching, I think I memorized it. Back in Wonderland.”

Lies, lies. Soobin didn’t know when it became so easy for him to lie. 

He was exhausted, he could feel the strain in his eyes as he looked forward and the ache in his muscles. The keys in his pocket felt way heavier than they needed to be. 

Hueningkai fluttered somewhere ahead of Soobin, looking behind him with sad eyes. There was an uncomfortable yowl of a cat in the distance, and Soobin could sense the fear behind Hueningkai’s eyes as the other’s gaze darted quickly around. “We have to hurry,” Hueningkai insisted. “There’s nothing dangerous if you follow right behind me. If you stray, then you might be caught in one of the Cat’s traps and die.”

Something in the distance twinkled once again, blue and green.

Soobin shivered and held onto Yeonjun’s hand. He wondered if Yeonjun knew what he was going to do. He wondered if it was worth it, to escort all of them through the maze.

But Yeonjun looked at him with admiration and courage, and the nod that he gave Soobin couldn’t have him backing down just yet, not even if the thought of the future made Soobin want to lay on the floor and cry. “You guys ready?”

“We’re ready, Soobin,” Yeonjun answered. “We trust you. We’re ready.”

Soobin wanted to take his own heart out of his chest and crush it into the dirt.

The actual path to the end of the maze was long and boring, and Soobin couldn’t have been more grateful. There were no jabberwockeys, no dragons or pixies like Hueningkai had warned him to be careful about. There were only hedges and hedges, and torches of strange blue fire.

Soobin tried not to look too closely at those things.

The images of Yeonjun, seeping his life into the throne and for Wonderland, were etched even in to the flames.

It made Soobin jumpy. Everything made Soobin jumpy. He was dripping white rose petals onto the floor, and no amount of comforting from Beomgyu, Taehyun, or Yeonjun was helping to ease the fear away from Soobin. He cursed himself for being so obvious, so clear in his fear that they’d literally collected and dribbled out of his hair as if they were sweat or tears or both.

“We can stop, Soobin,” Yeonjun had reassured. He was gentle. Yeonjun was always gentle with Soobin when it came to serious things.

Soobin felt like he was losing his grip on reality. Even looking at Yeonjun, each time Soobin blinked and blinked, he could see the other’s violet blood across his throat, and he needed to hold onto Yeonjun to really reassure himself that the older was here and he was alive. 

“No, it’s okay,” Soobin said, shaking his head. More white rose petals spilled onto the floor. “We’re almost there.”

Hueningkai watched and hesitantly reached out for Soobin. Upon realizing that it would do nothing to try and touch him, Hueningkai’s jaw tensed and he turned back to the path, continuing them down the maze.

It didn’t help that he could feel Taehyun’s stare boring holes right into his back, the more and more that they walked.

The staircase at the end of the maze was checkered, massive, and floating into the empty sky. Everything in Neverland was empty and malicious. Something echoed out behind them, as if it’d come from far beyond the water, but simultaneously rang in their ears: the curious cry of a cat.

There, on the second step of the ceramic tiles leading to the throne, taunted that rabbit gain. It morphed quickly, bleeding into nothing more than a shadow, before scurrying up the staircase. That time, the sneaking shadow took the shape of a cat.

Soobin was losing his mind. Everything made him jittery, and his palm was sweating in Yeonjun’s hold. There was no other choice; the fear was driving him to this conclusion. If there was anyone who deserved to suffer for all of eternity, it was going to be Soobin. For causing pain, for not truly being part of a solution, for knowing what their fate would be the second they sat on the throne and allowing his friends to live in careful ignorance about the pain that awaited them at the top of the steps.

“I gave up everything to come here,” Soobin said, releasing his hand from Yeonjun’s hold. “I sacrificed myself for everyone’s safety during the uprising.”

Hueningkai’s eyes grew as wide as saucers, and Soobin knew he must’ve looked crazy, openly staring at the place where the ghost seemed to drift. “Hyung, what are you doing-”

“I’ll take what belongs to me, right now.” Soobin drew his sword, if only to get the other three aces to back up. 

The lies burned in Soobin’s mouth, turning his tongue acidic. The poison felt like it could drip right past his lips, as he continued to grip his sword tightly in his hands. Anxious white roses grew at his ankles and began to bleed red. “Don’t get in my way. Stay right here if you know what’s good for you,” he warned, closing his mouth when he felt his throat burning with the weight of his suppressed tears and grimaces. 

He must have looked insane. 

He must have looked like he’d already given his mind to the madness of Neverland, or that he’d planned to be a traitor to his best friends since the very start. It would be so much easier if they hated him. If he knew that they hated him, but would make it out safely, then Soobin would do anything. If he were certain that Yeonjun’s life wouldn’t be brutally leached away from the throne to keep Wonderland alive like he’d seen on every surface, in every fire, in every reflection, Soobin would quickly give up everything to save them.

“Soobin-ah, what are you  _ talking _ about?” Yeonjun asked, stepping forward first. The roses at Soobin’s feet grew harsh vines, and in the distance, the Cat’s low yowl cut into their silence. “Stop being ridiculous and put that away. We’re so  _ close _ .”

The image kept flashing behind Soobin’s eyes, of Yeonjun so painfully pale and still, tied to the throne and wearing the crown. “I won’t,” he said, gripping his sword tightly enough in hopes that the tension won’t reveal his shaking hands.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Soobin-hyung? You can let it happen- you don’t need to save anyone.” Hueningkai mournfully watched from the side, still covered in the hyacinth petals as he had been when he first found Soobin. Though he wasn’t in pain any more, he looked on with equal parts disbelief as admiration for Soobin.

Soobin didn’t feel like a hero at all, but he nodded his head anyways.

Taehyun and Beomgyu stared in disbelief. Just as they’d arrived on the long stops to the throne, arm in arm, they held each other like it would help them process what they were witnessing. 

And Yeonjun, standing in front of them, angry and unable to believe Soobin’s outburst, reached out to grab Soobin’s arm. “Knock it off!”

“I’m not joking!” Soobin tore his arm away, eyes icy when he met Yeonjun’s fierce gaze. His body was trembling. Soobin could pitch over and vomit at any second, instead tearing his eyes away from Yeonjun to their friends on the side. He couldn’t stand to watch them, not when their faces were full of confusion and pain. His eyes were wild, frantic as he slowly started backing away from them before turning to the throne at the hovering field above.

Soobin started sprinting up the suspended tiles and steps as the black sky began to crumble around them. He could hear the shouting behind himself as he swung his arms forward, trying to skip over multiple steps at a time with his long legs. The throne itself was illuminated by a single light, placed highly on that floating field that it cast Soobin’s long shadow back onto his friends behind him.

It would be okay, he told himself as his lungs burned.

“Hyung, stop!” 

This is for the better, he promised himself as he fell to his knees, twisting with his sword in hand to hack off Taehyung’s tulip stalks that were winding around his ankles. The entirety of Neverland’s sky shuddered, and there it was, far into the dark, a cat’s meow. 

They were all racing up the floating stairs like it would do anything to stop Soobin, and he wheezed, hauling himself back up and skidding on the ivory tile with the flat of his ruined shoes. It didn’t matter if he ignored the truth of the future; even if Hueningkai said that no matter what, the future would come true, maybe it could happen at a later generation, when they were all long dead. 

Soobin ducked just in time to miss the sharp swarm of camellia petals, some swiping his cheek on the way, and Soobin turned over his shoulder in disbelief to see the rage in Beomgyu’s eyes. “Traitor! You traitor!” Beomgyu roared, hands swarming with the same magic petals as the four continued to hurry up the steps. “Fight us for real, you coward! You two-timing piece of shit!” 

It would be for the best of them, Soobin thought. If he suffered there, if he let the madness take over his mind until he became just another flower in that dusty field, he would accept it. If it would save their blood from running, Soobin would give up anything. 

“Stay back!” he screamed, the plea in his voice causing Taehyun to stumble on the step. Soobin heaved sturdy breaths, turning around quickly to swipe at the tile of one of the steps. It split open, erupting in thorny vines, blocking Taehyun from coming up any further. “Hueningkai-”

The ghost anticipated Soobin’s request and shot arrows down the staircase, cracking the checkered tiles and sending Beomgyu and Taehyun falling the short distance down, into the water below.


	7. Chapter 7

The entire world shook and trembled, like a thunder from deep within was concealing bright lightning far beyond the broken and shattered sky. The checkered tiles of the floating stairs crackled even more, sending its dust down into the black, nothingness below. Even the branches of the used-to-be trees were nonexistent from as high as they were. Yeonjun grit his teeth, pushing himself further up the steps, just out of reach of Soobin’s coattails. “Soobin!” 

With as much force as he could muster, he lunged for Soobin, grabbing him by the cuff of his sleeve, and forcing his body onto the slippery tile. He didn’t expect for Soobin to turn around underneath him, face screwed up in pain as he shoved his feet up under Yeonjun and kicked him off. Yeonjun fell backward, skidding down the steps. His shoulder painfully caught on the edge, and he screamed out in pain.

Yeonjun’s shield of petals unfurled from the ground, supporting and helping him back up, but Soobin was already stumbling back up the steps. “Look at me!” Yeonjun screamed, pushing himself off his bed of soon-melting white and violet pansy petals. They dispersed behind him, falling down the stairs like a mournful river.

It was now or never. They had the chance to fix Wonderland, to make the place as glorious as it used to be. Yeonjun, the last ace of Spades, could do just that, rewind time, settle their precious world above, but not if Soobin were abandoning them like this just to put the Hearts on the throne again.

There was no time to focus on the shattering in his chest. Yeonjun drew his sword. 

He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it; obviously something had been troubling Soobin for their entire journey and Yeonjun wanted to curse himself for not realizing it sooner. He should have done better to support him, he should have talked to him. There were a million ways that Yeonjun could think of that would’ve saved them from this hell.

But with Soobin there, standing in the field in front of the throne, Yeonjun wasn’t sure at all what to do.

“Soobin, please,” Yeonjun begged, coming closer and closer, though the both of them were wheezing from the climb. The earth under their feet shook once more, and the strange pool and field of flowers swayed and rippled despite there being no wind. “Please talk to me. Let’s just talk first, before you decide to do whatever the fuck you’re doing.”

Soobin shook his head, and when he made eye contact with Yeonjun again, Yeonjun gasped at the endless petals spilling down his face. They were white, but became red as they hit the floor. Yeonjun looked at his sword, at Soobin’s sword, and sheathed his own. He couldn’t do it. 

He couldn’t fight someone he’d given his entire heart to. Soobin was his world and his confidence. He was his life and his fear, and he was someone so precious to Yeonjun that Yeonjun was unsure how he’d been able to live without the touch of the other’s palms on his face for that whole month after uprising. “Soobin. This is enough, please, let’s just talk,” he pleaded and pleaded, stepping even closer. His body ached from the chase and from Soobin’s almost mindless attacks.

“Please, go away,” Soobin begged, shoving Yeonjun toward the steps again with the scabbard of his sword. He shoved it harsher into the other’s shoulder, his face pinching in pain when Yeonjun screamed out. “Stop struggling!” 

This wasn’t Soobin anymore. 

It was his body, Yeonjun realized, but something was eating at his mind. This wasn’t the same Soobin that Yeonjun knew, and he gripped at his shoulder, almost certain that it’d been popped out of its socket with that last shove from Soobin. He hadn’t even realized that he’d made it onto the floor, kneeling in front of Soobin to save himself from the pain.

There was so much pain that it pooled in his chest. Yeonjun wanted to scream it out for everyone to hear, but all he could do was replace that pain with rage. 

“How could you have done this to us!” Yeonjun screamed, the ground around him blooming in pansies whose mouths bit at Soobin’s ensnaring vines which were now encasing his entire frame, dragging him a little closer. 

Soobin’s breath caught in his throat when he saw the tears dripping from Yeonjun’s eyes. Aside from the elder’s obvious anger, the hurt spilled down his face in desperate drops, wetting the flower petals below. Soobin turned away, eyes welling up just as quickly.

“Did I ever even  _ know _ you?” Yeonjun continued to spit, thrashing around this way and that, even if the rose thorns punctured his sides and scraped his joints. He cried out, writhing, and Soobin could hear it like it was happening right beside his ear, even as he waded through the crystal clear, ankle deep water surrounding the throne. “I can’t believe we trusted you, I-” 

The water felt too warm, the throne too illuminated. The grass surrounding the throne looked so sweet and gentle, as the throne was gorgeously lined with gold and silver. He knew it was all a lie. The blue and green eyes in the far distance behind it crinkled, and sharpened white teeth curled into a crescent smile, becoming him closer to the throne.

“I gave you my everything, Soobin.”

Soobin ditched his sword and its scabbard into the water. The crystal liquid splashed up, glimmering like fine jewels on the scattered white roses that crept up by Soobin’s ankles. The closer he got, the petals themselves detached and began to bleed, turning a sorrowful red. The Cat somewhere meowed once, and its eyes and shiny teeth disappeared from the crumbling black beyond the floating field. 

It was eerily quiet, there on the field. The steps that had crumbled before them no longer made noise, though the dust that was kicked up from the shattering tile was illuminated by the throne’s spotlight. So far up here, there was no ghost of a Joker, no enraged Club or hesitant Diamond. 

It was just he and the Spade, his love, that he’d betrayed.

Soobin wanted to feel numb. The adrenaline no longer kept his body from feeling the physical ache of their battle, and he could hardly find strength in his body to breathe. As Soobin turned to take a seat on the throne, still trembling and bleeding down his fingertips, he met Yeonjun’s empty eyes. The disbelief and pain had settled in the Spade’s features, forced onto his knees on the shallow pool, as Soobin cried rose petals down his cheeks.

The hurt ran deep, even though the vines and roses were gentle. The vines crawled the expanse of Soobin’s back painfully slowly, caressing him with the soft petals and tilting his chin up with their leaves, forcing Soobin to look at Yeonjun down the bridge of his gentle nose. 

Even if Yeonjun were to hate him for the rest of his life, it would be okay. Even if the vines were to leach every bit of living strength from Soobin’s mind and heart, it would be alright. Hueningkai promised to get Yeonjun home safely, after the initiation would finish. He could live a safe and happy life after Soobin resets Wonderland to glory, after he gives up himself to turn back time and alter the strange reality up above. 

Hopefully, he could live in that dream, or forget Soobin entirely; Yeonjun didn’t deserve to live with the heartbreak. It was better if he didn’t know the reason why.

On that day, Soobin abandoned everything. 


	8. Chapter 8

It was beautiful and bright. That was the first thing that Yeonjun realized when he opened his eyes again. It was so bright in fact that it made Yeonjun’s eyes hurt.

“Oh, you’re awake?”

Yeonjun gasped, blinking his eyes and around the white haze, he made out Soobin’s face. The other reached for him, petting his hair and cheeks, and Yeonjun didn’t realize it at the time, but tears spilled down his cheeks. 

“Yeonjun-hyung, don’t cry, please,” Soobin soothed, gently begging. There were lips on Yeonjun’s forehead and he did his best to push his body up from where he was laying. “No, lay down a while,” Soobin’s voice whispered, gentle hands pushing at his shoulders, and Yeonjun felt something soft covering his body, all the way up to his shoulders. “I’m so sorry. You’re probably afraid… hyung, I’m sorry.”

He was exhausted. Yeonjun’s body no longer hurt but he whined, feeling like the white light was too blinding. Everything was too much. “Don’t leave me, Soobin,” Yeonjun said instead, lips as dry as the desert.

“I won’t leave you,” Soobin whispered back, and Yeonjun could feel those large palms on his forehead, playing with his hair. “I won’t move away from you.”

The next time that Yeonjun woke up, he was able to take a better look at the surroundings, and it tossed him into a feeling of confusion unlike any other. “Soobin-ah?” he called into the empty room. The decorations were angelic. Things were much too perfect for Yeonjun to understand; the furniture too white, too untouched. It seemed like a dream. Yeonjun wondered if he looked outside, would he see clouds below them?

“I’m here, hyung,” he heard Soobin’s voice from the other side of the room, and Soobin was quick to arrive. In contrast to the white, white place, Soobin was dressed in red. It was so unlike him, to be wearing emblems of the Hearts, that Yeonjun flinched back from the other’s touch.

There was a crown on Soobin’s head. Its gems were ruby and gleaming. Soobin never dressed up so grandly, not even on the most important days with the Court back in Wonderland. “You almost killed me,” Yeonjun breathed, remembering the feeling of thorns in his skin, of vines encasing his entire body as he sat knelt at Soobin’s feet.

He watched something happen, but he couldn’t remember what.

The lights were too blinding. Yeonjun couldn’t even think.

“What are you talking about?” Soobin asked in concern, eyebrows coming together, and Yeonjun was put to peace at least for a second, looking into Soobin’s dark eyes and not finding anything malicious in there. 

“In Neverland. You almost killed me trying to get to the throne. Is that why you have a crown right now?” 

Soobin felt the top of his head and Yeonjun watched as the other’s cheeks flushed pink. It would have been cute, if Yeonjun weren’t confused out of his mind. “The crown? You have one too, Mister King of Wonderland… You… really don’t remember anything do you?”

Yeonjun blinked in confusion, feeling the blankets on the lap, clenching them in his fingers as if to feel if they were real or not. “I… I suppose I don’t. I don’t remember anything at all.”

Soobin nodded and pointed to the spot beside Yeonjun, giving him a questioning look as if to ask for permission to sit there too. The red of Soobin’s clothes looked strange on the white, white sheets and blankets and pillows. “You passed out right away, so I don’t blame you… The Cat chased us all the way up the steps. I found out a Joker had been illusioning us, but when you sat on the throne, all of the illusions broke. We’re in Neverland right now. Your magic purified the place, so now Taehyun and Beomgyu are watching over Wonderland. This is it, Yeonjun-hyung. We did it. We made it.”

Yeonjun felt relief flood his chest. “So we did it,” he repeated, deciding to tiredly flop over onto Soobin’s shoulders and hold him, really hold him. “Fuck. That Jokers’ illusions really were strong,” he whispered, gripping onto the deep, red cloak around Soobin’s shoulders. He let himself make peace in Soobin’s chest, as if to just feel him sturdy beneath his fingers, and be reassured that nothing terrible had actually happened.

“It was scary for all of us. I’m sorry you couldn’t say goodbye to Taehyun and Beomgyu… they were… they were bummed that they had to leave first,” Soobin whispered, smoothing a hand up and down Yeonjun’s back.

This was comfort. It was cozy, and all Yeonjun had ever wanted. Although the lights were so bright, as long as it was Soobin here with him, and that Soobin hadn’t actually turned traitor like the Joker had made him believe, then Yeonjun could live the rest of his life happily. “I want to kiss you, but I’m honestly kind of hungry and exhausted,” Yeonjun confessed quietly, and he could feel the rumble of Soobin’s laugh beneath his fingertips. 

“Why don’t we go eat something before I can’t even hear your voice over your stomach’s growls,” Soobin teased, getting off of the bed first and helping Yeonjun up.

His clothes were simple, white. Everything here was cream or white. “Who designed this place,” Yeonjun asked with a scrunch of his nose. The tile was cold under his bare feet, and Soobin nudged some plain slippers to the edge of the bed for him to put on. 

“I guess… technically you? Since you purified everything,” Soobin shrugged. 

Life was good with Soobin there. It was like a dream, for just the two of them together in this land, bathing in white.

There were no more ominous noises and the sky was no longer falling. Yeonjun always questioned why Soobin wore the crown, even though there was no one around them to watch. Neverland was a deserted place, Soobin had explained, and somehow when Yeonjun had taken the throne, it’d instilled Soobin as a co-ruler along the way of the coronation. 

“I don’t want to take it off because… you gave this to me, in a way,” Soobin explained, a little shy, a little embarrassed.

Yeonjun had found it cute, only gleaming so brightly and taking Soobin into his arms. “Okay, I get it. You love your hyung too much to take it off, right? I think you look beautiful with it on. A true ruler, Soobinnie,” Yeonjun smiled.

Soobin was teasing and sweet. He was everything and more. When they kissed, Soobin smelled like the roses on his head, and Yeonjun even found himself flustered by Soobin every so often. They chased each other around pillars for fun, ate food that was so delicious and seemed to come out of thin air. 

Life was a dream. Yeonjun felt at peace, yet at the same time, he didn’t quite understand why he saw fear flickering in Soobin’s eyes.

Soobin showed him around the entire palace.

“When you were knocked out cold, I was bored so I figured out all the stuff here. Remember that sea that we saw? It’s actually just one giant pool. We can even go swimming, if you want.”

“Soobin, you don’t even like to swim. What’s going on here?”

Soobin frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

This place was paradise, Yeonjun thought. Every pillar was angelic white, and even the flowers that bloomed on the vines creeping up the stone were the prettiest white roses that were no doubtedly a little touch that Soobin gave to this sweet lullaby of a palace. And that was what it truly was: A dream. The waters were too clear, the prisms cast by the perfect glass a little too vibrant. It was too bright white, even for Yeonjun, who enjoyed spending his days in the sun. There were no cracks in any of the tiles, and the vaulted ceilings gave Yeonjun the impression that they were practically outside already, staring straight into the baby blue sky.

The light painted the place in pastel colors, such a stark contrast to Soobin, who continuously bloomed red roses in his dark hair. When they hit the floor, they seemed to sparkle. 

“This place is beautiful,” Yeonjun sighed, taking Soobin by his hands. “But… shouldn’t we be going back home soon?” 

Soobin’s eyes seemed to flicker, like he was put off by Yeonjun’s expression, but his expression softened into something familiar and reasonable. “We’ll have to rule here. I won’t be able to… do all of this back there in Wonderland. You can go back home if you’d like, but, then I’d-”

“No,” Yeonjun quickly interjected with a slight squeeze of his fingers. There was nothing that scared him more than being some place where he’d never be able to see Soobin again. They had gone through so much pain already, to have made it this far and achieved so much. “This is just fine. I just thought it was weird that you wanted to swim.”

The stiffness in Soobin’s shoulders seemed to melt away, and Yeonjun rubbed at the back of the other’s neck in an apology. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Soobin sighed, turning into Yeonjun’s chest when the other opened his arms up for him. Soobin’s head felt heavy on Yeonjun’s shoulder. “Can we go to sleep early? I’m tired.”

“Of course, Soobin-ah,” Yeonjun whispered, concerned, but not wanting to push the question too much.

They shared a quick kiss before heading back inside the white castle.

* * *

“Hyung. You can’t pretend it’s okay anymore. There’ll be no world to come back to, if you keep this up,” Hueningkai pleaded, grabbing onto Soobin’s elbow. “This… all of this is a lie. You need to open your eyes, hyung. I know you can do it.”

Soobin’s breath shuddered in and out. He could feel Yeonjun crouched there at his feet, covered by all their pretty petals, soaking in the once-crystal water. The rose petals that grew over Soobin’s eyes only hurt whenever he tried to blink, and he settled instead for holding tight onto Yeonjun’s shoulder and back. He wanted to drag the other up onto his throne, cradle him and apologize for this mess that he’d caused. “Shush, he’ll wake up,” Soobin scolded, voice dry.

Even the sun was mourning for Soobin and Yeonjun. 

The both of them, heavily overgrown in Soobin’s rose stems, protected from the world by its mighty thorns, would never be able to finish this journey that they started. Taehyun and Beomgyu wouldn’t be able to make it back up here, not with the stairs that had since long crumbled during Soobin’s coronation. The most that he could do was pet Yeonjun’s cheeks and wish for him to keep sleeping.

They could be together like this forever. Soobin would make sure they could be safe forever, if it meant that they could continue to live in their dreams of white. 

Instead, the dark of the world past the throne and the odd eyes that stared wide at him from outside their safe cocoon only covered Soobin’s eyes even more. 


	9. Chapter 9

Something wasn’t right.

The world was too bright. The world was too perfect. There was no one else, and no matter how much Soobin asked about Taehyun and Beomgyu, Soobin would shut him down. “I just want to see Wonderland again,” Yeonjun sighed in frustration, and at that moment, he saw even more fear flicker in Soobin’s eyes.

“Well you can’t,” Soobin stubbornly answered.

“And why can’t I?” Yeonjun deadpanned in response.

“Since you took the throne, you have to sit here and run it yourself. I could’ve gone back to Wonderland too, but I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

Yeonjun sighed heavily. It was the same argument each time, but his eyes were cutting through Soobin’s confidence and they both knew it. “You aren’t telling me something, Soobin.”

“That’s not true,” Soobin countered with a scoff. He crossed his arms, as if inconvenienced by Yeonjun’s questioning.

“It is, and you’re not taking me seriously!”

The outburst was enough to have Soobin blinking, and his image looked like it was flickering. “I… okay, you’re right. I’m keeping something from you, but it’s for the best. But what we have right here is okay and safe.”

Yeonjun paused, eyebrows coming together in confusion. The more he stared at Soobin, the more he realized that the bright white light never made a clear image of Soobin. It was as if the image of him was always flickering. “Soobin, you know I love you right?” Yeonjun asked, feeling small, smaller than just a speck of dust. Something here was very wrong.

“Of course, hyung,” Soobin answered, breathless as he reached for Yeonjun’s hands. “I love you too. I love you so much, Yeonjun-hyung. I wanted this to be okay for us.”

“I know, Soobin,” Yeonjun sighed, pulling Soobin closely in. He could feel the other’s heartbeat as they held each other, chest to chest. He closed his eyes, leaning his head comfortably into the other’s shoulder and neck. “I know, I know, I know. I love you, Soobin. I love you.”

“Please. Let me wake up.”

The first thing Yeonjun saw was green and red, everywhere.

He could only watch in pain. With each new petal that bloomed around Soobin’s head, Yeonjun couldn’t think he was any less beautiful than before. What once was white turned red as the symbol on Soobin’s hand, dripping down into the crystal pool, just before turning it pink. He wondered if Soobin could hear him scream and cry. The Heart’s shoulders were so slack that he looked barely alive, even as he lazily opened and closed his eyes. Though he looked in Yeonjun’s direction, the Spade could tell, he wasn’t seeing a single thing.

The peonies around Yeonjun’s crouched body cried until their petals detached. They desperately reached for the crystal pool and field, just a meter away. There at the edge of the field, the Dream realm seemed scarier, further away. 

“Yeonjun-hyung,” a soft voice murmured, appearing at the edge of the field. He was stunning, but mournful, fractured bits of violet hyacinth petals strewn about his hair. “I’m going to take you home.”

“Who are you? No, I- not without Soobin, please get me out of this,” he pleaded, pulling against the stiff vines. “Get me out!” 

The ghostly looking kid worried over the vines, looking at where they’d grown from the floor and then at the abandoned white sword and decaying peonies that lay at the edge of the world. “I… I can’t let you take him,” he frowned, gathering Yeonjun’s abandoned weapon from the floor. Yeonjun’s breath hitched as he watched the other discretely attempt to clean it of the red petals and withered vines. “There’s no way he can leave. He’s already started Dreaming. If you pull him from the throne right now, he’ll die.” 

“I’ll wait for him, forever if I have to,” Yeonjun cried, resting his forehead down into the dirt, hiding his tears from the stranger. 

How could Yeonjun have failed?

It was his only task, to take the throne and set Wonderland back into prosperity, but since venturing to this world in hopes of becoming heroes, they’d only been tossed upside down.

If a Spade was meant to rule, that Spade was obviously himself. How could Soobin have done something so selfish? How could he have tossed away everything that they struggled for? Had every promise they made been a lie?

The feeling of Soobin’s large palms in his own, reassuring and sweet even when everyone had wanted to give up, live in the Dream realm for the rest of their lives and abandon their roles as Aces… when they confessed their feelings to each other, was that sad look foretelling Soobin’s deceit?

No, that couldn’t have been true. Soobin must have been trying to protect him. He could feel the other’s fear as the two of them dreamt together. That blinding white palace was nothing but an illusion, and Yeonjun’s tied body was a testament to that. Soobin was genuine as they confessed their love to each other; but it was nothing that they hadn’t already known.

He never took the Heart for a liar. Yeonjun trusted Soobin with his entire being; he would abandon life itself to trust him. He squeezed his eyes shut, just once more. Whatever it was that he was dreaming about, that pristine, white land, was nothing like this floating island in the middle of a destroyed realm. Neverland was a horrible, terrible place. It must have been absorbing all of Wonderland’s pain for this long. He wondered what it was about that damned throne, that could turn back time and put their lives together.

The field shuddered as wind passed over it, and the ghost beside him shivered, flinching when a long wail of a cat was heard in the distance. “I don’t want you trying anything weird,” the ghost urgently said, and with Yeonjun’s very own sword, stabbed into the earth around Yeonjun. 

“I’m taking Soobin home with me,” Yeonjun struggled, watching as beads of sweat collected on the boy’s forehead from the exertion. 

The ghost continued to cut around Yeonjun, bound to the earth by Soobin’s own vines. “Give that to me,  _ please _ ,” he begged, noticing how the ghost had grit his teeth and pointedly ignored Yeonjun’s pleas. The yowling became closer and closer, and the ghost suddenly stopped, halfway done with cutting Yeonjun out from the soil.

The giant cat turned its head this way and that, taunting the ghost from behind Yeonjun. The golden light on the throne bled into red, and the water from the crystal pool started to rush, pouring down over the flowers and dragging the fallen petals from Yeonjun and Soobin with it, falling off the edge of their floating world. 

* * *

“Don’t,” Taehyun warned, grunting when Beomgyu beside him had tugged at the hyacinth arrow caught in his thigh. “Seriously, don’t! Untie me and I’ll take it out for you.”

“This is such shit,” Beomgyu grunted, dragging himself along the deck of the ship they’d been tossed onto after they’d been practically shot off the steps to the throne. “This is such shit!” 

Once Taehyun was free and he could rub at his sore wrists and shoulders, he leaned over the wound in Beomgyu’s still oozing leg. “I know,” he huffed, taking a look at the hyacinth’s stalk curiously, poking at it this way and that and making Beomgyu cry out in pain. “I’m sorry hyung, I’m really trying to do something here.”

“I know, I know, it just hurts,” Beomgyu whined, and when the two of them made eye contact again, Taehyun softened, swiping some of the tears away from Beomgyu’s cheeks. 

“Be patient and I’ll figure this out,” Taehyun reassured, and Beomgyu had nodded, though there was sweat already collecting on Beomgyu’s forehead. There was something strange about these arrows that Taehyun didn’t quite understand, but after pulling at the leaves on the stem, the thing fizzled away into nothing but Wonderland magic. “See, told you.”

“It’s so sore,” Beomgyu frowned, and Taehyun only patted the other’s uninjured thigh, giving him a pitiful yet comforting kind of smile. “Are you okay too, Taehyun-ah?” 

“I’m alright. Just shocked I guess… are we on a boat right now?”

“Help me up and we can look around.” 

The both of them hooked elbows, hauling each other up, and the uneasy sway of the wood below them really proved it to be true. The sky was weird, violet yet not violet. It would soon become red, and there was some celestial something way past the throne, which also wasn’t too far away. From where Taehyun and Beomgyu were though, they could see the silhouette of a Cat, creeping along the island, circling it this way and that.

“We’re on the boat,” Beomgyu repeated, rubbing his palms down his face. “As if it couldn’t get any worse. We need to figure out how to work this thing and get over there. Where’s the captain’s deck?”

“Is that what the thing’s called?” Taehyun snorted, helping Beomgyu as the two of them hobbled around the not too large, yet not too small ship of theirs. Its sails caught some kind of wind, and they were drifting in the general direction of the floating throne field - turned - island. 

“Dunno, does it matter?”

“Guess not.”

It was simple enough, once they’d found the captain’s quarters, or what they assumed was meant to steer the ship, there were too many handles and levers for the both of them to comprehend what to do. “Once I get my hands on Soobin,” Beomgyu had muttered under his breath, “I’m just going to… I’ll… I don’t even know what I’ll do.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Taehyun confessed with a frown, pulling hard on one of the levers, and suddenly the boat began to rise, as if carried by the wind instead of the water. The two of them shared a look before they decided to pull on it more, and the ship lifted itself out of the water. “Steer this ship and I’ll deal with the levers.”

“Taehyun-ah… I don’t understand how you’re so calm right now,” Beomgyu sighed, taking control of the steering wheel just as Taehyun suggested. “We almost died.”

“But we didn’t and… I was having really weird dreams when we were on the way to the maze. I think there was something weird going on there. Maybe it’s because both Soobin-hyung and I have red suits or something; really this place was feeding us nightmares.”

It was silent between them for some time, like Beomgyu was taking in what Taehyun said and considering it all for himself. He didn’t really want to punish Soobin in any way. The Heart had done something brash, but Beomgyu was certain he could speak on everyone’s behalf when in saying that it was uncharacteristic of him to have exploded like that. 

“Nightmares huh,” Beomgyu mumbled. “It must have been driving him mad, then.”

“It was terrible,” Taehyun shivered. “If Soobin-hyung saw what I saw, then… I can understand why he did all that. He probably was trying to protect us. In that nightmare, I saw Yeonjun-hyung on the throne. He was certainly dead, and it was certainly sapping all the magic out of him.”

Beomgyu stopped to look at Taehyun properly. Although Taehyun kept his eyes on the equipment, and although he tried to be so logical and thoughtful all the time, he was still young. He still needed support. “It must have been scary, Taehyunnie.”

“It was scary,” Taehyun agreed.

Beomgyu and Taehyun let go of the controls for a moment. They needed to be in each others’ arms. Beomgyu could feel Taehyun tremble, but didn’t voice it at all. Even after Taehyun had sniffled once and pulled away, and their hands were back at the controls, they didn’t say anything about it. They didn’t need to.

“So let’s get back to that island and cut them off the throne. If you said whoever sat there is overgrown, we’ll probably have to put in a lot of work.”

“Since when have we not put in a lot of work?” Taehyun asked, only laughing lightly when Beomgyu bumped playfully into his shoulder. 

“Okay,” Beomgyu pouted, fake shrugging in defeat. “For the record, Taehyunnie… when we make it back to Wonderland… you’re good company and. If we don’t get the change again, I want to cordially invite you to one of the Clubs’ massive parties.”

“You’re not a party person, hyung,” Taehyun smiled softly. The message was clear to the both of them. Even though they were rushing back to the throne’s island, there was no certainty that they’d be able to undo what had happened there. To be fair, they didn’t even know much of what was happening beside seeing the glinting green and blue eyes from beyond. “But I accept your invitation.”

The island looked like it was beginning to crumble, and wordlessly, the two of them kicked their flying ship into a faster speed. The water beneath them looked black and empty. 

“It’s a date then, if we make it out of this.”

“Definitely, a date.”


	10. Chapter 10

The hisses from the giant cat rang around like laughter, bouncing off the wall-less, skyless Neverland and making the earth vibrate with its force. 

Hueningkai was too exhausted from sending Taehyun and Beomgyu somewhere earlier, somewhere safe when the world had rumbled and the ocean had overtaken all of Neverland below. He was certain they were stranded far out on that ship; he’d carried the both of them there himself. There was no way he would be able to do this a second time. He brought the sword high above his head, swiping Soobin’s vines away from Yeonjun as the cat continued to stalk them, walking on nothing but air as it continued to cackle. 

“Okay, fine,  _ fine, _ but- you seriously can’t take him, we have to go!” Hueningkai frantically said, cutting through the vines and slamming the sword’s point into the crumbling ground. Bathed in the red light, wet from the pinky water of the once clear crystal pool, he heaved Yeonjun’s defeated body up from the floor.

“Not without Soobin,” Yeonjun groaned, head dizzy from the spinning world. The hissing laughter rolled in Yeonjun’s skull, making him weak at the knees. 

Without warning, the cat pounced, digging its claws into the floating field and tilting its platform, sending both Yeonjun and Hueningkai toppling to the floor. The water splashed around them, pouring over the edge of the world like a waterfall. They both cried out as the water rushed past them, dripping down over the cat’s claws. 

Hueningkai, with the last of his remaining strength, hauled Yeonjun up onto his feet again, practically tossing him toward his white sword. “Take it and jump!” He urged, slipping on the tilted ground as the cat’s claws raked into the earth, crumbling the ground along with it. The cat sneered, continuing to laugh and laugh.

Yeonjun watched as Soobin’s head, slumped over from the sudden tilt of the floating field, steadily raised, and from the red light above them twinkled a weird star from the inky black sky. 

Something was different about him. He stared at Hueningkai and Yeonjun, but didn’t see them, not really.

Head bowed in the chair, sword heavily overgrown with barely budding flowers, Soobin looked like something out of a picture. 

“You weren’t supposed to see,” he croaked, eyes barely cracked.

Yeonjun watched the water ripple around them and he desperately reached out to hold him, but the Cat pounced between he and Soobin. 

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeonjun-hyung!” 

Hueningkai grit his teeth, seeing the floating ship come closer into view, and the massive cat with its equally massive, crescent grin seemed to appear out of the shadows even more, looming over both Hueningkai and Yeonjun. It yowled one last time, laughing before turning into shadows and sneaking up the overgrown vines, settling over Soobin and escaping somewhere through Soobin’s forehead.

Soobin tilted his head back and laughed. His shoulders were hunched as he leaned his arms onto his knees, staring down at the four of them as if their mere presence were a joke. “Don’t you have some more lives to ruin?” He laughed at them. The shadows on his sunken cheeks sculpted his face sharply, and although his eyes still weren’t visible, the four of them below shivered at the darkness radiating from him. “Go! Sacrifice me again!”

“We didn’t sacrifice you!” Beomgyu grit his teeth. The second the ship had hit into the side of the throne’s field and made all of the earth shake, both Beomgyu and Taehyun had tossed themselves over the side with the help of Taehyun’s tulip whip, just as they’d done at the beginning of this long journey. Taehyun gripped his hands tightly. “Hyung, knock it off!” 

The ace on the throne only tossed his body back in an unnatural way. His laughs echoed out into the dark space around them, almost as if he were mocking them for being so far away. “You don’t know what this is like,” he bitterly laughed, his smile turning into something pained. “Of course it was supposed to be me!”

The shadows on the ground contorted, like puppet strings were pulling it this way and that. Taehyun could have sworn he saw the shadow of large ears sprout up from Soobin’s petal-covered head. When Soobin stood from the throne, he behaved unnaturally, as if being pulled by a million strings. The vines decayed and slid off his body, emitting smoke when they hit the floor.

“Have a seat,” Soobin’s voice taunted, but the four in the field were taken aback by how foreign it sounded. “Have a seat, before I make you!” 

Yeonjun barely had time to raise his sword before deflecting Soobin’s from his frame. It made his blood run cold, realizing that Soobin had attacked him.

No, that wasn’t Soobin. That was something else. 

Soobin’s body moved in jerky movements, deflecting all of Beomgyu’s dagger-like petals, and pulling Taehyun’s whip free from his hands and sending it skidding down the land some feet away. Yeonjun was gritting his teeth, wincing when the metal of their swords met and sent sparks into the otherwise dark night.

“Soobin, snap out of it!” Yeonjun growled, shoving Soobin back and giving him enough time to at least catch his breath. Behind him, he saw that ghostly kid shakily collect a strangely colored hyacinth onto a bow. He could sense the fear in Hueningkai’s frame, as every time he tried to ready the bow, the twitching of the fingers would make the bowstring wobble. 

With one strange, gasping breath, Soobin drew his sword high above his head, and Yeonjun held his in front, prepared to block, when the arrow shot right through Soobin’s shoulder and sent him onto the floor.

Soobin groaned, gasping and spitting out onto the dirty field. His entire body heaved as he sank, crying into the grass from the pain in his head and in his eyes. Though there wasn’t a single inch of him that didn’t feel pain, he managed to keep himself from actually collapsing, instead feeling his body convulse with something strange deep in the muscle of his body. When he finally had the strength to pick his head up, the first person he saw was Yeonjun.

The white blade tipped Soobin’s chin up even further, and the petals from his hair all at once started to decay. “Hyung,” he croaked, still twitching and weak. 

Yeonjun bit down on his lip, forcing the blade closer to Soobin’s throat.

Soobin gasped, flinching away from it. The fear pooled in his eyes, spilling down the sides of his face.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun said. In the now silence of Neverland, it sounded clear in Soobin’s mind. “Get up.”

His body ached. He couldn’t move a muscle, and the fog around his vision only disoriented him more. Their world was tilted on its axis, and Soobin still craned his head away from Yeonjun’s blade. His heart shattered in his chest; the way that Yeonjun looked at him, like he was disgusted with what he’d become, from the madness that was overtaking his mind, hurt even more than the throne. “I can’t,” he whispered. 

“Soobin,” Yeonjun began again with a sigh, though his tone was soft. “Get up.”

It was only then that Soobin noticed just how badly the sword was quivering. He gripped one of the massive, rotting vines beside him, hauling himself up even if it made him cry out in pain. It would be okay. Soobin deserved this; he deserved to be delivered the justice for the crimes he’d committed. For lying to Yeonjun, for putting himself on the throne against what they said they would do. For keeping Yeonjun’s eyes covered as they dreamt. 

Taehyun and Beomgyu quickly grabbed Soobin by the arms, pinning his wrists behind himself as Soobin swayed on his legs. They weren’t gentle, binding him with the thick stalks of Taehyun’s tulips. Soobin let his head hang. He wondered how different their lives would be, if he had just been served his justice from the Court that night.

“We need the keys, the keys!” Hueningkai called, but his voice echoed from somewhere far away. Soobin could feel someone rummaging around his pocket. 

In his mind, something began to laugh again, the cackling making Soobin groan from the noise. His shoulders twitched, and he didn’t fight it when his body was being dragged backwards, through the water, through the field.

Back to the throne, back to suffer.

The panic he felt meant nothing. 

Emerging from Yeonjun’s side, Hueningkai watched Soobin with pure sorrow in his eyes.  _ “Don’t move,” _ he warned. 

Soobin didn’t dare to think about it.

There was that chiming again, like tea cups clinking together in his brain, and the laughter that bounced off the cavity of his skull had Soobin feeling dizzy again. He groaned, head turning this way and that as his arms twitched against Taehyun and Beomgyu’s hold.

Then, petals began to pull themselves out of Soobin’s skin, falling onto the ground like drips of bright red blood. The Cat continued to laugh, and Soobin struggled, tugging and tugging against the arms of his friends as his body screamed out until he could taste blood in his throat. 

Soobin thrashed, digging his heels into the dirt. “This belongs to me!” he roared, and when he blinked again, he was in that same darkness.

* * *

When Soobin’s body blinked, his eyes rapidly changed from green to blue and blue to green, flashing in desperation. “Yeonjun-hyung, let me go! Let me go!”

Yeonjun’s breath hitched at the familiar voice, as they struggled to shove Soobin into the chair. His chin wobbled as he squeezed his eyes shut, heart crying out that the desperate screams and pleas coming from Soobin’s throat. “Yeonjun-hyung, help me!” The gold and silver lining the wood of the throne flashed in quick succession, silhouetting Soobin’s frame until he was shrouded in light. 

Just like before, Neverland continued to crumble around them and Taehyun’s whip fought to hold Soobin’s frame to the throne. Soobin screamed, crying out until his throat became hoarse and tears freely dribbled down his cheeks. His lips, bitten red, bled down his chin and Beomgyu held Soobin’s head firmly in his hands, keeping him facing forward, upward toward the sky even as the other continued to thrash about.

Yeonjun shoved the key deep into Soobin’s forehead, the magical thing just shimmering as it was absorbed without resistance, without injury to the other’s skill. It was like water passing into nothing, the shimmering purple twinkling down the sides of Soobin’s face. 

The purple sun above was eclipsing, and just as the shadow passed over their patch of grass, the purple light flooded away, replaced by bright, shimmering gold, and with it, the shadow of the Cat dug its claws into the ground, forcefully pulled from Soobin’s body and finally-

Sucked into the dark of the sky, forever.

Soobin lay on the throne, eyes closed but his mouth hanging open. “Soobin. Soobinnie, it’s gone now, you’re okay,” Yeonjun rapidly said, though his voice was no louder than a whisper. The tulips coiled back, away from Taehyun’s hands and letting Soobin finally collapse. “Come on, blink it out. You can do it.”

When Soobin finally came to, he sighed in relief, slumping against the throne and taking Yeonjun’s hand in his own, squeezing it tightly.

Something strange was happening, but Yeonjun didn’t question it too much. He instead kept Soobin gathered on his lap, petting his sunken cheeks and rubbing dirt away from his face. 

“When this eclipse is over, time will be reset,” the ghost kid whispered, from where he was sitting beside Beomgyu and Taehyun. “Wonderland will have its second chance. You’ll be put on a happier timeline, all of you.”

“And what about you?” Yeonjun asked with a frown. Soobin breathed deeply in his arms, finally resting without dreaming.

“I think I’ll go back too. I was trapped in a statue somewhere,” Hueningkai confessed. “The eclipse is almost over.”   


Yeonjun nodded. The golden light that passed over the throne and Neverland was lit again; purified as was the land above.


	11. Epilogue

“I’m so excited,” Hueningkai confessed with pink on his cheeks. “I’ve never seen something happen like this before!”

“I’ve read about it before,” Taehyun said, proudly helping Hueningkai wear his coat properly. “I snuck into the archives and found it before. Four aces and an unknown, in an unknown world.”

“That sounds more like a fiction novel than anything,” Beomgyu laughed through his nose, but the three of them softened at something, burning in their minds: a distant memory that Wonderland’s magic had tried to make them forget. They simply couldn’t though. Despite the changes in this world up above, sometimes they dreamed about the silver well, and the jars of cookies and treats reading “Eat me!” and “Drink this!”

Hueningkai shrugged. “I guess. Does it matter too much anymore?”

“It does,” Taehyun answered, before Beomgyu could say that it didn’t. “Don’t talk about it too much around the other too. They still dream about it, you know.”

Hueningkai nodded, solemnly shutting his mouth. 

There, down the rose courtyard of the rebuilt Hearts’ castle, Yeonjun and Soobin walked hand in hand. Soobin, free of the red roses and blue and green eyes, now in this timeline that had seemed to be rewritten just for them and their happiness, had a flower crown adorned on his head. Yeonjun was no different, bumping Soobin’s hip with his own when they walked together. 

“Never heard of aces ruling Wonderland before,” Beomgyu sighed. The sky was clear and blue. The big clouds that were scattered about were the same color of cotton candy, and the sentient mushrooms were singing to the sentient butterflies and flowers. 

“Whatever. Let’s raid the snack table before Soobin-hyung realizes,” Taehyun said, grabbing Beomgyu by the hand and whisking him away. Hueningkai hurried right behind them, laughing as their feet hit the unruined cobblestone into the castle.

In the courtyard, Soobin and Yeonbin shared their moment. They didn’t have any more need for thrones or crowns. They had their safe petals instead; Soobin’s white rose petals and Yeonjun’s playful pansies, playing around their ankles whenever they took a step.

“I’m afraid sometimes,” Soobin confessed, flexing his fingers in Yeonjun’s fingers. “I’m scared that I’m stuck in that dream. The universe rewrote itself for us. Doesn’t that seem too good to be true?”

“It does,” Yeonjun answered honestly, bringing the both of them to a stop. “We can do our best to forget, but I don’t think we ever will.”

“I’m sorry. For lying to you.”

Yeonjun’s eyes softened, and brought Soobin down into another kiss. “I won’t say I wasn’t upset, but it’s over now. For the record, I still will never leave your side.” 

“You’re legally obligated to never leave my side,” Soobin deadpanned, affectionately hitting his head once against the other’s, much to Yeonjun’s humor and enjoyment. 

“I know, but I mean it. And I want you to stop apologizing to me. We have it sorted out, and you didn’t hurt me at all. Look at us now? Let’s just live happily, Soobin-ah. I want to live happily with you.”

“I love you, hyung,” Soobin had sighed. There, in their rewritten world, the Wonderland that they saved was glamorous. Now older, alive, and well, they could truly experience it for themselves.

“I love you too.” 


End file.
